The Nevermind Aesthetic

I Know It's Over; Or, hey hey, my my (into the black)

2011-03-14T00:38:00.004-05:00

This blog is now officially CLOSED. I will post a link to my new blog, which opens for "business" in the next week or so, after I work out the kinks while @ SXSW 2011. It was fun while it lasted. For everybody who has ever dropped by, thanks. I hope it was a pleasant experience!

The south's gonna do it again.

2009-09-07T10:47:00.003-05:00

Yesterday in The Arizona Republic, Ed Masley published a list article called "Six Pillars of Southern Rock," which purported to pick out the most significant Southern Rock albums without ever stating so explicitly. Here's his list

1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, (pronounced 'leh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) (1973)
3. The Allman Brothers, At the Fillmore East (1971)
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors (1977)
5. The Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera (2001)
6. The Black Crowes, Shake Your Money Maker (1990)

In fact Masley's weasel words descriptive qualifier for his list is "six essential albums that are probably more Southern Rock than ZZ Top." Putting aside the obvious comment on the timorous adverb. This is clearly a definition that defines nothing. From the list we can in fer that Masley is looking for some kind of traditionalist notion of Southern Rock as a guitar driven entity, coming out of the wedding of blues and country traditions, which focuses on some notionally Southern version of manhood. Thus we get such a conservative list that misses at least two bands best album and has the throwaway sixth entry, which really doesn't belong despite all Masley's protestations otherwise!

There are many ways to redo and improve this list. I will simply offer two: a better traditionalist list followed by a better list which has a much broader definition of Southern Rock. Also I fail to see why there are six pillars? Sikhism has three, the Dominican order has four, Islam has five. But wisdom (Proverbs 9:1) has seven! and surely what said list is offering is wisdom.

Seven Pillars of [Traditional] Southern Rock
1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Second Helping (1974)
3. The Allman Brothers, At the Fillmore East (1971)
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd, One More ~~For~~ From the Road (1976)
5. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors (1977)
6. The Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South (2004)
7. Molly Hatchett, Flirtin' With Disaster (1979)

Honorable Mention:
The Outlaws, Outlaws (1975)
.38 Special Wild-Eyed Southern Boys (1981)
Derek & The Dominoes,Layla and Assorted Other Love Songs (1970)
Little Feat, Dixie Chicken (1973)
The Band, The Band (1969)
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bayou Country (1969)

This list is temporally bound as Southern Rock's great era came to a close with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, with only the Drive-By Truckers as a unique outlier. The Allmans were the originators but Skynyrd was clearly THE BAND, thus they merit 3 slots. Their second album is better than the first, plus everyone knows the version of "Free Bird" you wanna hear is on the live double LP with Cameron Crowe's famous liner notes. Molly Hatchett stands in for all the other lesser Southern bands, some of them listed in the honorable mention section. This section is provided not as a cheat on the 7, but rather to give readers a wider range of listening/investigating options. It also points to some precursors.

Seven Pillars of [Non-Traditional] Southern Rock
1. The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Second Helping (1974)
3. Big Star, Radio City (1974)
4. Pylon, Gyrate (1980)
5. Archers of Loaf, Icky Mettle (1993)
6. OutKast, Stankonia (2000)
7. The Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South (2004)

Honorable Mention:
Dusty Springfield, Dusty In Memphis (1969)
The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers (1971)
The B-52s, Wild Planet (1980)
REM, Murmur (1983) or Reconstruction of the Fables (1985)
Superchunk, Tossing Seeds: Singles 89-91 (1992)
The dBs, Stands for deciBels/Repercussion (2001)

The list veers away from strictly guitar driven rock venturing into rap and the new wave. I chose the B-52s second album because the red one is more "Southern" than the yellow one. I also, against the critical grain, like it better. Both Fame in Muscle Shoals and Stax in Memphis needed to be noticed in this list, thus the Dusty and Rolling Stones' honorable mentions.

How many more years.

2009-09-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

A photo essay on yesterday's 14th annual Howlin' Wolf Memorial Blues Festival at The Civic in West Point, MS.

Festival Director Richard Ramsey introduces the next act.

Big Joe Shelton does the "Black Prairie Blues!

Memorial shrine for the late Willie King.

Honored guests and members of Howlin' Wolf's immediate family.

Bill Abel from Belzoni.

Some signs at the Civic's entryway faux Juke.

Mississippi has been a "red" state since Reconstruction even whe it voted yellow Dog.

Billy Dee always was smooth . . . Bingo long anybody?

Colin Linden from Nashville via Toronto.

Medley.

2009-09-04T12:48:00.001-05:00

Sam Cooke presents a classic medley.

Seems appropriate that this blog's 350th entry is a mishmash.

Tonight I'm heading West Point way for this. With any luck some photos up in the future. And don't forget this other local festival, which will have some major news re: headliners for 2009 the Tuesday after Labor Day.

This medley by The Bishop of Soul Solomon Burke pays homage to his fellow travelers.

Looking forward to a historic opener for the Mississippi State Bulldogs as they become the first SEC team to host a SWAC HBCU team, the Jackson State Tigers. More specifically, I'm really looking forward to the halftime performance of the visiting team's band, The Sonic Boom of the South!

A few other famous show band performances with better sound:

And let's close with a classic medley from "the Hardest Working Man in Show Business . . . Mr. Dynomite . . . Mr. Please Please . . . Soul Brother #1 . . . Are you ready for Star Time?"

Dixie Chicken.

2009-09-03T11:06:00.003-05:00

The most recent issue of the Oxford American is an extravaganza for lovers of Southern writing. They list not only the Best Southern Novels of All Time but also the Best Southern Nonfiction.

Here's the Novels Top 10

1. Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1938)
2. Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men (1946)
3. William Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury (1929)
4. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
5. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (1950)
6. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (1961)
7. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
8. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
9. Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (1952)
10. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

As I've commented elsewhere, this list is surprisingly conservative in providing a narrowly focused view of one particular version of The South. Sure;y there has been a great novel or two in the last 30 years or even longer since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964! Later this week the online OA will publish the longer list from 11-50 and that's probably where the more interesting action will be. For now my thoughts. 3 Faulkner's is too much, but he's important enough I don't mind seeing him twice. I'd lose The Sound and the Fury Myself. Penn Warren's mess of about four different novels shoved together is really overrated at 2 here. I'm not convinced Invisible Man really belongs on a list of great Southern novels although I do realize it has the "Tuskegee" section. Personally I'd replace it with another forgotten Harlem Renaissance classic, Jean Toomer's Cane (1923). I'd put something modern in the place of the third Faulkner and perhaps something urban. Maybe a Florida noir by John D. MacDonald—say The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)—or something Appalachian like Ron Rash, Serena (2008) or Sharyn McCrumb, She Walks These Hills (1994). For a quirkier old school selection I'd go with George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes (1880).

Here's the Nonfiction Top 5

1. Agee & Evans, Let US Now Praise Famous Men(1941)
2. Richard Wright, Black Boy(1945)
3. W.J. Cash, The Mind of The South (1941)
4. Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings (1984)
5. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974)

Sure this list avoids the former's time-boundedness, but it is still pretty conservative and presents a kind if old fashioned monolithic view of the South. Agee & Evans at number one is a well-earned given as was Absalom, Absalom! I'm glad to see W.J.Cash gte his due rather than being trashed as some kind of racist by ex post facto. holier than thou academics. I'd jettison both 4 and 5 from my top 5. I was at the Harvard lectures which became One Writer's Beginnings. Professor Costello is right that this book represents an idealized and nicer little old lady version of Welty. It was also Harvard University Press's first NY Times bestseller but I'm not sure it rises to the level of greatness. Similarly I think Foote owes his prestige more to his appearance on Ken Burns' miniseries than he does for the impact of his extended history. What do I put in their place? My Mississippi book would be Willie Morris, The Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983), discussed more here. Food being so important to the South, I'd think long and hard about a food book and perhaps go with a book about food rather than one of numerous cookbooks, so John T.Edge, Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South (2000).

A few other serious contenders would include something by C. Vann Woodward from the list The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955), The Burden of Southern History (1968), Origins of The New South (1951), or Mary Chestnut's Civil War (1982) any of which could be seen as a corrective to Cash. For reportage and because it became even more relevant after Katrina, John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1998). Barry's book really helped me understand the area I had moved to when took my job at Mississippi State. Penn Warren shows up either in I'll Take My Stand: The South and The Agrarian Tradition (1930) or with Cleanth Brooks, Understanding Poetry (1938). Finally one personal quirky favorite would be Gloria Jahoda, The Other Florida (1967). The essay, "Two Hundred Miles from Anywhere Else," remains the best explanation of why my hometown Tallahassee, FL is unlike any other "city in Florida, or in the South" (128).

Little Feat at the Rainbow Theatre London 1977

UPDATE [Saturday, September 5 9:37 AM]

The full Oxford American Lists were released yesterday for Underrated, Novels and Nonfiction. As I expected this is where the real interest in this categorizing/listing project lay. I was pleased to see many of my alternate suggestions there and some just outside the Top 5 or 10. For example if you collate the split votes for C. Vann Woodward across the 4 works I mentioned he gets to 22 and is 6th on that list. I was also leaed that one novel and one nonfiction pick of mine were unique (MacDonald and Edge).

Something and nothing.

2009-08-19T16:26:00.000-05:00

As fans of this blog know by now, I spent 1985-6 in York on a Rotary Post-graduate Fellowship. There I first heard the second Reception single, "Once More," by the Wedding Present whilst working as a staffer at URY. They rapidly became one of my favorite bands. Here's a little something I wrote about their early best phase for PopMatters.

What was and what shall never be

Another the letter.

2009-08-18T10:15:00.004-05:00

Woke up to this shocking news which came to me in a circuitous route. Someone landed here when they Googled this: "closing of harvard university press display room in harvard square." Sure I understand the world of publishing has changed, but surely the wealthiest University in the history of the world could cut its own Press a little slack on the rent of a room or two in Holyoke Center, now couldn't they? I know, I know, the silly mantra: "Every tub on its own bottom" Blah Blah Blah.

Now you'll have to head to Blackwell's in Oxford, Foyle's in London, or Powell's in Portland for that amazing wall half red half green filled with Loeb Classical editions. Plus how many cheapo copies of Lipstick Traces did I score over the years (slight damage here, dog ear tear there, et cetera et cetera et cetera)? And no I'm not interested in hearing how great your Kindle is!

Lagniappe for making it this far. Our title song on German TV in 1978:

Mexican radio

2009-08-12T11:54:00.004-05:00

I wish I was in Tijuana
eating barbecued iguana.
—Stan Ridgway

It's somehow perfectly appropriate that I will go see the USA v. Mexico CONCACAF WC qualifier from Azteca on Telemundo at a Peruvian restaurant in Mississippi. As usual Mexican fans will surely outnumber us Yanks!

Ole! Ole Ole Ole. Just one Cantor "Dramatico Final! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!" pretty please.

Little whirl: GBV (iii).

2009-08-12T10:51:00.000-05:00

Bob is everywhere with helicopter at Memphis' Last Place on Earth.

2/3 of the rockin' rhythm section.

"Smothered in Hugs" at the New Years's Eve 2004 Final Show in Chicago

"Game of Pricks" Amoeba in-store in Hollywood 2002

The club is open for the Final Show!

"Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy" Live in Dayton 1994 (The classic line up)

Cut-Out Witch at the GbV reunion show (AKA Bob's 50th Bday party)

Tobin Sprout "Awful Bliss" from Bee Thousand Live in Chicago

Tobin Sprout "Dayton Oh 19 Something and 5" reunited with GbV at Final Columbus, OH show

2 from a 40 Watt show.

A band of seemingly endless line ups, whose like we'll surely not see or hear again!

Fin.

Picture me big time: GBV (ii)

2009-08-10T08:57:00.001-05:00

A random collection of my favorite GBV videos through the years.

"Bulldog Skin" This one has played on the JumboTron at Davis Wade Stadium Scott Field right here in Mississippi. To which I say, "More Cowbell!"

"Weed King"

"Glad Girls"

"I Am A Scientist"

"My Kind of Soldier"

An Old School Interview from 1996

The famous Family Feud send-up. Incidentally Guided by Voices won the game!

The last part of our trilogy will highlight live performances; here's a foretaste.

"Teeange FBI" Live on The 10:30 Slot

Man called aerodynamics: GBV (i).

2009-08-09T22:46:00.007-05:00

Anybody who really knows me understands it was only a matter of time before the GBV You Tube entry sprung up. They also probably realized it would be a multiple parter. I dedicate Part 1 to my Facebook friend Doug Gillard: he of the endless riffs!

Doug was in a lot of bands before GBV, lastly Cobra Verde, for whom he wrote a little ditty made famous by Pollard & co.
"I am A Tree"

Tallahassee native that I am this clip, filmed at the Cow Haus as it was in 2002, gives me great joy! At a 40 Watt show, Doug accepted my copy of Mag Earwhig! to get signed by the entire band to send to my friend who had just moved to Dayton, OH to be a Department Chair. Ask yourself one question: why was the lead guitarist for international "rock stars" wandering around a club freely available to his fans? Yeah, Doug is a mensch!

"Redmen and Their Wives"

Speaking of the 40 Watt, I only ever heard this track live once on the Electrifying Conclusion tour in Athens, GA.

"Back to the Lake"

Amoeba in-houses rule whether Hollywood or Haight!

Speak Kindly of Bob's best solo album, the one with Doug Gillard!

GBV is done, but occasionally this will happen:

I haven't done nearly full justice really to the genius of Doug Gillard, but you get a real taste of him here. All I can say is the club will always be open, when DG is in town!

I close with 2 rare pictures I took myself.

The first features DG in full flight at the legendary Last Place on Earth show in Memphis.

We shall never forget the other guys: Farley and Tobias. They were way cool too. Here they hang out at The Nick after Ice Storm 2000 with Gordon before GBV's set!

More Pollard madness tomorrow . . .

A night in tunisia.

2009-08-09T00:27:00.003-05:00

The Mediterannean patio-fest small dinner party was a memorable evening, in spite of the patio-lessness. Just too muggy. We started with some skewers to gnosh on:

I set up dinner as serve yourself stytle buffet in the dining room. What you don't see here is the Moroccan black olive loaf bread on the table.

Our Main course proved a cultural hybrid: Marella Pasta from Apulia married with a Catalan Red Pepper Sauce and Gulf Shrimp.

The salad was a colorful marinated affair including roasted red pepper slices, green, orange, and yellow bell pepper slices, Vidalia onion slices, quartered artichoke hearts, various olives, tomatoes of all shapes, sizes and hues, and mango slices with a lime ginger garlic homemade vinaigrette:

Not to brag, but it was pretty good and a nice culmination for the weekend de cuisine.

The end has no end.

2009-08-06T16:15:00.005-05:00

The Strokes' song title seems an appropriate sentiment for this ongoing weekend de cuisine. Last night was a little grill out followed by a DVD in the music room. Tonight pre-"Thursday Night is Poker Night Event #8," I have a potluck supper from 5:30-7:00 three houses down the hill on Edgewood. Here's what I made.

Basically a faux Mediterranean marinated salad with lemon ginger garlic vinaigrette and optional garlic and herb feta cheese crumbles.

Essentially I cut up three different size, type and shade tomatoes (well no cut to cherry), a Vidalia onion, a mango, a red and green bell pepper and then added pitted black olives and quartered artichoke hearts. Seasoned the salad and drenched it with fresh lime juice. Then I marinated with the aforementioned homemade vinaigrette. We'll see how it turned out in about an hour.

Tomorrow I have the Starshine benefit for SAAC Cook-off at the State Theatre. I'm sorta pulling for Vicki Leach because of this, but Ty Thames, Jay Yates or J.J. winning would be great too. Saturday I'm doing a Mediterranean inflected pasta feed on the back patio with a focus on Catalan-cuisine, though no El Bulli foamy pyrotechnics I fear.

Off to sharpen my 7" Santoku . . .

Field day for the sundays.

2009-08-03T05:27:00.002-05:00

A short sharp shock from the irrepressible Pink Flag! 1977 collides 2009.

Wanted to do a video essay for Wire like I did for the Buzzcocks last week and am finding it harder to get interesting footage for Wire. No luck yet with any live stuff. And Wire do put on memorable live gigs, however rare-ish they might be.

A beautiful Wire original followed by an equally impressive Flying Saucer Attack cover:

And then I remembered the Wire, Live on the Box (1979) DVD, and lo and behold . . . "Map Ref 43°N 110°W" from the famous Rockpalast gig:

Wire introduced by Suzanne Somers?!!?

"In the Art of Stopping"

"Lowdown" live at South Street Seaport, NYC 5/30/2008

Airwaves dream.

2009-07-30T12:21:00.002-05:00

Did you know that song? No, not you J.G. Norman; I'm sure YOU did. Well I didn't! I know The Buzzcocks' Singles Making Steady-era extremely well and also on vinyl have a new-ish 7" discussed here.

"Airwaves Dream" helps to make my point about the essential genius of the songwriting team of Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle. Well O.K., Pete writes most of the songs. But it's their interplay on guitars that makes the whole thing tick and why the band has survived through a variety of 3rd and 4th players.

1 short one and 2 long(er) ones to fill your aural feast.

"Why She's A Girl From A Chain Store"

"Moving Away From The Pulsebeat"

"I Believe"

They still put on a great show as Buzzcocks MK IIIb! Investigate Manchester's Likely Lads for yourselves then. And watch for the tour where they play their first two albums in their entirety coming to North America perhaps later this fall. The Publican's Secret is out.

You really got me.

2009-07-28T22:43:00.003-05:00

A while ago I mentioned this conference coming up in October in VA honoring Andrew Gurr. Well, today got the news. My paper, Falstaff at the Garter: The 1602 Merry wives of Windsor as City Comedy, was accepted. For non-Shakespeareans, I won't bore you with an extended summary. Just suffice it to say that the status of this printed version of the play has been part of a major and on-going debate within Shakespearean studies for more than a hundred years about the nature of play texts and their status as authetntic authorial documents.

Centerfield.

2009-07-27T06:07:00.001-05:00

Well no left, actually. Yesterday, they inducted two of the left fielders of my youth into the Baseball Hall of Fame: the utterly unique Rickey Henderson, of whom Bill James once exclaimed that statistically he had two Hall of Fame careers (!), and the BoSox Jim Rice, my second favorite player on my favorite team after right fielder Dwight "Dewey" Evans, he of the cannon and perfect form when performing the long throw from the outfield.

Show me the way.

2009-07-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

If you watch tape-delayed US TV, there be spoilers below!

So 37-year-old Lance Armstrong is human after all, but just barely as he rode around the Champs-Élysées swigging champers and standing 3rd on the podium at the 2009 Tour de France. Quite an accomplishment, esp. after the crash and broken collarbone earlier this year in March.

Congrats to Lewis Hamilton for a fabulous and unexpected win on a somber day at Hungaroring.

4 world records already gone on Day 1 of the last Hi Tech suit meet at the Satdio de Nuoto in the Foro Italico in Rome. Special was Pellegrini breaking the 4 minute barrier in the women's 400m freestyle. The US men unexpectedly upset the French in the 400 X 100m freestyle relayed wven without Jason Lezak who opted for the Maccabiah Games instead.

Eat a peach.

2009-07-25T13:05:00.002-05:00

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

from T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" 11.111-125

That'll be the day.

2009-07-21T14:06:00.005-05:00

Woke up to find out my third PopMatters YoutTube essay jumped the queue and was published a mere 2 days after I submitted it. Now the purpose for my trip to Antone's is made clear.

Fantastic breakfast at Juanita's Tacos and more followed by a trip to UT Austin camopus to finalize my reader's privileges at The Harry Ransom Center.

I love restaurants that set up in converted train cars.

I had a migas and cheese taco and a chorizo and cheese taco con dos salsas (pictured) and a Diet Coke all for $5 even.

The main entrance to campus overseen by the famous UT Tower.

The entrance to Harry Ransom Center.

Two great exhibitions I saw.

Lunch at the Famous Ruby's BBQ: 2 1/2 pound mixed plates Elgin Sausages and either Beef/Pork with Cole Slaw and BBQ Beans plus Freshly Squeezed Homemade Lemonade.

This afternoon took Gracie for another play period at Town Lake underneath Mo-Pac Bridge and a walk down and back to Deep Eddy Pool concluded with a fantastic Papaya Maya smoothie. That will be all from Austin. Adios amigos!

Mellow down easy.

2009-07-20T17:00:00.004-05:00

This afternoon took Gracie to another favorite dog park at the other end of Town Lake, Red Bud Isle. Here's a brief photographic essay sans comment.

The Tom Miller Dam marks the boundary between Lake Austin and Town Lake.

Bengali in platforms.

2009-07-20T08:44:00.001-05:00

One of Austin's best restaurants in a historic adobe building downtown.

The mango lassi not only tasted great it was beautiful as well.

Look at this spread; all for under $40!

I collect beer mats. This is a new fave!

House at pooh corner.

2009-07-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

I'm spending the week of July 15th-22nd visiting my Stanford pal Isaac and staying at his place on Blanco @ 9th just around the corner from Waterloo Records, Book People, and The Whole Foods flagship store, while his wife Janine and his daughter Madison are visiting family in the Netherlands.

My upstairs lair above the converted "garage", also known as Janine's home office work, where her famous Jane Austen book is coming to its final fruition.

What the garage was converted into.

The central core of the main 1893 Victorian farmhouse cottage.

Various shots of the house and garage's exteriors. Yes . . . it has a white picket fence.

She's about a mover.

2009-07-19T15:35:00.002-05:00

Texas Monthly's No. 1 Texas song.

Saturday

Rather than sleeping in we got up at 7 and took a 4.2 round mile walk from Blanco along the Lady Bird Trail around Town Lake stopping at Auditorium Shores for Gacie to go off-leash, swim, and play with some other dogs. We interrupted out homeward journey at the foot of Blanco to grab a quick breakie at Sweetish Hill: Hibiscus Mint Iced Tea, Cherry Empenada, and Ham & Swiss Bialy which we shared.

Then it was on to Central Market to do both long-term grocery shopping preparing for Madison and Janine's return from Holland as well as short-term shopping preparing for tonight's dinner with visitor Molly Schwartzburg, a curator at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center and like me with an AB from Harvard and a PhD in English from Stanford. I focused on doing some amazing bacon wrapped huge seas scallops and my secret marinade sauce (it involves soy, chili, teriyaki and Worcestershire sauces plus various secret herbs and spices). Isaac did nice potato frittata and some baked Halibut filets.

We also stopped by Karavel, and I got a new pair of running/training New Balances to replace the ones I got on my last Austin sojourn over July 4th 2006.

Sunday

We had a Mexican breakfast at Joe's Bakery and Coffee Shop on the Eastside. Isaac went with three increasingly larger tacos: chorizo & egg, carne guisada, y Miga con todo. I had a small Taco with carne guisada and a Huevos Ranchero plate with scramble degss plus some water. After a car tour around the UT campus, we stopped by Blanco and then drove up to Mount Bonnell. Point of information: I made it a point of saying I was going to climb Moutn Bonnell this trip and I did because in 2006 on a downward spiral health-wise I just couldn't get up those steps to the summit. 8 months later I was hospitalized for a week with what was ultiately diagnosed as CHF. Thought I'm not at the body type weight I want to get to eventually. I am far healthier now with good blood pressure and choloesterol levels!

Texas knows how to tell a funny historical story.

Looking back 2/3 up the climb.

The top of Mount Bonell and views

Isaac with a bored Gracie.

GE bringing Mississippi Blues to the Austin highlands.

On the way home, we stopped at Austin's music central and minded the gap!

I picked up a fascinating 2008 local release: athens v sparta, the history of the peloponnesian war. Then home and a lazy afternoon watching the British Open slip away from Tom Watson . . . sigh! But congrats to first time major-winner, Stewart Cink! Then I folded my laundry and completed submitting a Sound Affects blog entry, Musical Genius and Its Discontents (I): American-style, to PopMatters, which considers the "2nd Acts" of oky Erickson, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, and Shuggie Otis. I'll work on part 2 concerning the British later tonight and tomorrow.

Indian food 2nite . . .

T for texas.

2009-07-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

Fantastic meal last night a game decision by Issac. We walked 3 blocks down the hill to his local Cafe Josie where Blanco meets 6th street. I had the Green chile polenta with a starter of Crab bisque finished with a corn salsa. Isaac had the specila Mahi Mahi with a baby spinach salad. We started with scallops au gratin, another special, to share and closed sharing the Venezuelan Chocolate pot. Our next meal out will be at The ClayPit, either Friday or Saturday evening, my treat this time!

Made myself breakfast this morning to go along with my PG tips tea. Yougurt Curry Scrambled eggs with Kosher Salt and Cracked Black Pepper plus Nature's Own OatNut Toast with unsalted European-style butter from the Whole Foods flagship store, which is five blocks away.

Spent the day at home working except for a quick trip to Fry's for the necessary mini 5 pin plug to usb plug for downloading my snaps from the digital camera and to WalMart for some Scalpicin and shaving cream as I ran out this morning. We have a full weekend ahead, so i don't expect to blog again before Sunday evening.

Reverbation.

2009-07-16T11:14:00.018-05:00

So I went to Rocky Erickson's Birthday Bash at Antone's with "No Expectations." These kind of affairs, not unlike the classic record release party, are usually about enjoyment and not music, and full of sloppy, schlocky sentimentality and not much in the way of worthwhile live performances. Apparently Texas didn't get that memo. I state categorically that last night's show at Antone's was one of the 10 best I've been at in my life and that includes stuff like The Smiths at the Manchester Club Academy in 1986 on their The Queen is Dead tour, Wire at the Double Door in Chicago (2003), the Buzzcocks at House of Blues, NOLA (2003), The Drive-By Truckers at the Old Main Music Festival (2006), My Bloody Valentine at Slim's opening the US portion of the Loveless tour (1992), and Mission of Burma's farewell show at the Bradford Hotel in 1983. In other words, I'm not a neophyte easily moved to raptures of positivity. 3 bands each very good and two great in different ways. And each band in a slightly different genre. Now that's what I call a killer show.

Starting us off at 8:30 was The Golden Boys, a classic Austin-style psychobilly country outfit down to the Nord keyboard. They were energetic and also had a lot of fun with guest stars, especially at the end of the night by which time they had added a mandolin, a fiddle, harmonica, and a sax amongst other instruments. The mandolin was apparently played by the manager of Antone's Record Shop. The whole night was about family really: fans of Roky and fans of Antone's as this the club's on-going 34th anniversary.

Next up was The Riverboat Gamblers, an Austin-based band who originally hail from Denton, TX home to UNT or North Texas State for us old timers. And probably home to more great unheard bands than any other city in America by population, due I suspect to UNT's famous music school. No number crunching here, but my two exemplars make my point. The Peel Favorite, Lift to Experience, and Starkvegas' favorite son Chapman Welch, excuse me . . . Dr. Chapman Welch . . . Oh yeah and someone named Norah Jones! Anyway I haven't seen a better live performance anywhere anytime any place in the last decade. These guys were incendiary and on it from the get go. Kinda like having been in LA ca. 1978 or DC ca. 1981. You're getting the vibe. The frontman had an Ian Curtis-kinda look but backed with an Iggy swivvely-hipped spirit and the mike twirling skills of either Daltrey or Pollard. The lead guitarist was either Southeast Asian or from the Middle East and he just shredded everyting in sight. Do yourself a favor run and out and get a disc by the Riverboat Gamblers. I was "singing" or at least "Hey Hey Hey"-ing along to songs I'ver never heard before.

Here's their actual setlist!

And then at 10:35 the main event, the legend in his own time Roky Erickson took the stage with a hot new as yet unnamed backing band (14th Floor Escalators anyone or maybe the Psychedelic Segways!). Anyway they immediately launched into a version of "Reverbation" that would have made the Reid brothers bow down. 12 songs later we got the double ending punch of "Two Headed Dog" followed by "You're Gonna Miss Me" and then it was done. The performance ran about 90 minutes and was astonishing. Not so much for stage presence or showmanship but for the glorious sounds produced by the pounding drummer, the bass player straight off a Surfari's record, and the lead guitarist, who reminded me of a younger Doug Gillard: that professional, that many riffs to spare, and frankly that nice a guy. He soloed so intensely on "Click your Fingers" he basically tore the skin off three fingers and bled the rest of the set, but he soldiered on as the great ones do.

Roky's Mom in her 80s here celebrating her son's 62nd birthday!

Antone's co-founder does the introduction

Roky unleashes "Reverbation" as an opener.

The crowd was into it.

Roky's Mom dances with some fans.

Roky looking for that "Two Headed Dog"

Roky unleashes the 13th Floor Elevators' "You're Gonna Miss Me"!

For the Roky fan's and any psycho completists, here's the official setlist:

Reverbation
Don't shake me
Splash 1
Creature with atom brain
The wind and more
Starry eyes
Bloody hammer
Stand for the fire demon
The beast
Click your fingers
night of the vampire
cold night for alligators
and now we fly
two headed dog
Your gonna miss me

Not played were the extras: "Splash 1" (originally scheduled 3rd on setlist)" and "I walked with a zombie." Substituted extra was "Don't slander me."

Amazing footage from a fizzygeek, who was basically right behind me and about two people closer to center stage.

He also took some beautiful stills.

On the road again (parte dos).

2009-07-14T09:09:00.002-05:00

I leave for a week of pleasure and business in Austin, Tejas mañana. Will do some blogging from the Republic of . . . Plus news of upcoming Sound Affects columns at PopMatters. Stay tuned.

It says here.

2009-07-08T10:46:00.002-05:00

I promised some news of note pre-July 4th and I like to deliver on such assertions. As of today I am a blogger doing the Sound Affects column for PopMatters. My first piece can be found here.

What does this mean for TNA?

Very little, except I might blog slightly less frequently here. Some but not all longer blogs on musical topics will head to PopMatters, but I will note their publication here.

Independence day.

2009-07-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

A brief record of my quick trip to Lake Junaluska over the 4th of July weekend 2009. Our house was rented through the morning of the 5th, so we stayed at the Lodge of Waynesville on Russ Avenue in Waynesville just off the Smoky Mountain Expressway.

An eerie Smoky Mountain sky with its own seeming twister.

Mom settles in for 4th of July appetizers.

The Lodge's well maintain ground around the pool.

Looking from behind the Lodge over Russ Avenue towards THE COLD MOUNTAIN.

Mom enjoys hors d'oeurves while Dad tests the wi-fi connection.

Lake Junaluska's firewroks were shielded by interceding hills. The Waynesville fireworks appeared at the end of Russ Avenue but were probably shot off from the field between the elementary school and the old Drive-In theater. Alas they never put 2 or 3 good barrages together so all I ever got was black dark sky in my shots.

July 5th about 9 AM we headed to our house on South Lakeshore Drive. I added to our upstairs library with books brought from the Florida and Mississippi branches. People really seem to like to read mysteries here according to notes they leave as well as stray volumes gifted to our stacks. Carl Djerassi, for whom Syntex/steroids made it possible, was married later in life to a friend and Stanford English professor, the late Diane Middlebrook best known for her biographies of Anne Sexton and Billie Tipton. I already had a copy of the same paperback edition of Byatt's Possession at 119 Edgewood, so the dupe went north.

Views of and from our front deck.

Took another walk around the lake and an amazing array of flowers were in bloom both on the Rose Walk and elsewhere!

Tour de france.

2009-07-07T11:47:00.003-05:00

The Kraftwerk techno classic puts me in mind of the summer of punk, which I spent ensconced in Europe, in Freiburg-im-Briesgau, West Germany precisely. One highlight of a summer full of many of them was attending Stage 13A of the 1977 Tour De France, essentially a looped criterion race of 46km around the town and environs. The stage was won by 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist, Patrick Sercu, late in his career and as an homage to his racing partner, the great Eddy Merckx, for whom this would be the last le Tour finishing in 6th overall.

After finishing Merckx calmly waited at the finish line to greet adoring fans and make time for autograph seekers and kids alike. He also handed out official Merckx cycling caps as shown above and below! Hardly Le Cannibal of fame!

On the road again.

2009-07-03T22:36:00.002-05:00

TNA takes its annual July 4th respite. I'm spending a long weekend at Lake Junaluska and will resume blogging by say Friday July 10th, hopefully with some exciting news, perhaps related to this blog.

The gambler.

2009-07-03T10:06:00.005-05:00

Hold 'em

So I like to play poker, almost any variety. Have done so since college at least, though I have friends who played "seriously" in high school. But I really only began playing regularly once I became a Faculty member at Mississippi State, first in a Monthly faculty low stakes game with a lot of luck games like night baseball. As the TV poker craze took off. I joined a second game, originally composed of folks who worked at Boardtown Corp. which was then bought out by TuCows.com. The game started at P's north-side apartment, but has since removed to his south-side digs on Peach St. It's also transmogrified into a bi-weekly affair. It's always been a winner-take-all tournament with a $5 buy for chips and unlimited rebuys until the 5th betting round. If we have nine players, second place gets their buy returned.The fun thing about a recurring game like this is you can get a sense of your growth as a poker player plus learn how to read other folk's hands as you accumulate more and more information about the playing and betting styles of each individual player over time. Plus how else a you have this much fun for an evening on a mere $5!

Fold 'em
Here's an insider's view of the world of TNIPN (Thusday Night IS Poker Night) #6: The "Red White and Blue" edition at the Peach Street Poker room. Here the chip buys are being prepared on the table.

We use a tournament computer program which keeps track of which round we're on, the amounts for big and small blinds, counts down the 20 minutes per round, and alerts if with 1 minute to go.

Pre-flop players checking their 2 holes cards.

After four rounds, we color up as blinds have rise above usefulness of our white 5 cent chips. For each you get 1 blue quarter chip, You get one extra blue for final 5s from 1-5. Note the neat stack of whites below ans the dealer grabbing some blue chips . . .

with which he replaces the withdrawn white chips.

My play last night: good early—I was the first to bust somebody on an all-in, but it was early so they rebought and ultimately outlasted me though with $10 as opposed to $5 invested up front. No glory this week for fils, but père was the big winner.

One step beyond.

2009-07-01T23:30:00.006-05:00

My take on step-by-step cooking demonstrations.

Class 1: The Clear the Fridge & Make a Great Sandwich Lunch: Step-By-Step-Style

Start with your basic ingredients. Especially thick and wide (preferably from a boule) slices of sandwich bread. On one side layer main ingredients on top of say coarse ground mustard. Here we have thinly sliced Vidalia Onion, slabs of slicing tomatoes, and shave deli sliced garlic roasted Turkey. On the other slab deconstructed avocado slices plus some mayonaise with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Top the avocado half with cheese, in this case Jalapeño Cheddar slices and Crumbled Feta with Garlic and Herbs. Place under broiler until cheese is melted then remove.

Assemble sandwich, slice, and plate. Serve with any side. Here simply a few grape clusters. Chips or potato salad are other solid choices.

Remember whatever happens, ENJOY YOURSELF!

Class 2: Step-By-Step Steak on the Patio Meal

O.K. we're moving up several weight categories t a more elaborate dinner preparation. And that's the key: preparation. Thinking things out in advance and organizing ingredients and tools makes the cooking process ever so much easier. Here's what a professional chef would call his/her mise en place.

Tonight, we're attempting to grill and hickory smoke Marinated Bacon-wrapped Center Cut Sirloins and serve them with Caramelized Vidalia Onions and Sour Cream, Curry, and Chive Mashed Potatoes.

Set your stove on medium heat and put some olive oil in a skillet and onion slices. Saute for a minute or so and reduce heat to low. The key here is multitasking. Grill should already have been heated. I cheat and use gas for speed.

Place smoking cup on hot end of grill and two steaks on cooler end. Will cook with top closed for best smoking effects. Note setup of high temp and low temp on each end trying to set up a convection current inside grill as well. You cook steak about 8 minutes per side. For best grill marks at the 3:30 to 4:00 mark on each side spin steak 90 degrees to get nice crosshatching.

At the same time make sure your dining area is ready to go. If it's nice enough to grill outside, it's nice enough to dine al fresco as well.

Don't forget your main mantra: always be multi-taskin'. Check the brownness of the onions. Make sure to turn them to get them evenly cooked. When done remove from stove and if need be put in a pre-warmed oven below 175 degrees to keep warm until plating time.

One advantage of grillin' for guys is the elaboration of tools: charcoal rakes, tongs, flippers, grill mitts et cetera. But don't forget also the essential indoor tools that might be useful outdoors as well. Here a Santoku (Viking 7")—kinda for show really— and the workhorse implement, an offset serrated knife for cutting through the crisp bacon and neither scalding your knuckles nor mashing your sirloin in the process (F. Dick 8"—just ask Bourdain!) a timer for keeping track of when to turn and when to flip your steaks and a spatula for close in work as opposed to standard grill flipper.

As Neil Young once opined, "When I get big I'm gonna get an electric guitar. When I get real big." To which I respond, "when I get rich I'm gonna get a Global G2 Chef's Knife. When I get real rich."

for more on the art of grilling, check out this guy's book and ETV TV series.

When done, let the steaks sit at least 5 minutes to finish cooking and cool down.

I'm eating alone and this is, after all, a how-to, s we slice one steak to see if its medium rare: charred on the edges but pink in the center. Looks about right.

The we plate our steak, onions, and mashed potatoes up and bon apetit.

Improve your mood and dining ambiance with some music. "Music for evenings" from Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth sounds good place to start streaming on iTunes to some remote wireless speakers outside. Ahhh . . . dinner time. Just because you're single and maybe live alone is absolutely no excuse not to live and eat well.

This has been another Rat in mi Kitchen joint!

Slightly south of the border (reprise).

2009-06-30T23:02:00.004-05:00

Thanks to my next-door neighbor who graciously shared her fresh and piquant Basil earlier 2nite which got the mental juices flowin'!

I created Mexi-terrean Pollo Peasant Pesto Pasta a la Provençal

Microwave Tysons Fajita chicken boil Lemon Pepper Linguine 2 minutes to al dente, saute diced Vidalia onions in Olio Santo Roasted Garlic Olive Oil. Add fresh pesto and fajita chicken and saute another minute or two. Assemble in a pot. Season with sea salt, red pepper flakes, oregano flakes and herbs de Provence. Serve with Pinot Grigio and San Pelligrino. The peasant life sure can be good.

An homage to Francesca who a decade ago shared her >native expertise in all things pasta and because she, Tom, and the kids just had a great weekend away from Liguria in Provence and to Susan who gave me my pasta stuff and the cookbook which taught me not to oversauce ala Américain!

Plain and simple and yes delish, if I do say so myself.

The yummi yummi yummi song.

2009-06-29T19:10:00.001-05:00

As promised, My 3 Favorite Cookbooks

The Obvious One

A very special gift from Donna. You can't take THAT away from me now! Can you?

I generally think it's the best broad spectrum introductory cookbook currently available—sorry Rombauer clan.

The Other Two Quirky Picks

Harvey Steiman's California Kitchen

Great no-nonsense advice from KCBS radio personality. Favorite recipe Harvey's "OJ Fish"

Susan Bradley Pacific Northwest Palate

A great early proponents of seasonal cooking from one of the few areas that offers wildly variant foodstuffs throughout the calendar year. favorite recipe is a surprisingly easy Salmon in Parchment with Walla Walla Corn, Tomatoes and Rice
Steaming in parchment ona grill is really healthy. Plus its such a show-offy presentation to plop the thing down on a plate and the snip it open with kitchen shears. Trust me she'll be impressed, guys.

No scans of the latter 2 because like spawning salmon they have returned to their roots or at least Lake Oswego, OR. I suspect after the move in is complete JK Landrum will put them in a box and send 'em back! having harvested their roe . . .

Lagniappe: Best Single Topic Cookbook

Another gift from one of my oldest friends: Susan P. Morgan! I still also have the glass pasta container and white plastic pasta ladle that came with it one Christmas as below.

Note the Caribbean bus hanger was also courtesy of Susan on another day.

Rat in mi kitchen.

2009-06-29T08:47:00.004-05:00

So yeah I am kinda an über geeky Foodie despite a lack of any real training. Training Schmaining I do declare! I did get Alton Brown on my "Which Food Network Star are You?" quiz. I did take 2 one day hands-on classes at the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood, MS: Thai Dinner Party and Basic Knife Skills. I watched every episode of Cooking at the Academy on KQED and Tape thrice! Greatest Cooking Show ever. Brilliant and simple conceit: each show does a menu based around one "la technique." So yeah they buggin' on Pepin. My favorite: "Sauteeing" & Red Snapper Franciscan over Leeks with Mushroom Potatoes. 1st complete meal I ever cooked for Mom. Score!

Despite what Julia Reed claims, many Southerners really do enjoy eating out and count those meals amongst their most favorite ever, as we don't have household help any longer (it no longer being the 1960s and all) and really don't believe that frozen tomato juice is all that. Snap! Thus,

My Five Most Memorable Meals

1) August 21, 1977 (the summer of punk)

My Father had a second sabbatical and a Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to do research at the Max Planck Institüt in Freiburg-im-Briesgau, Germany.

For my mother's birthday we splurged at Auberge d'Ille in Illehausern, France, just over the Rhine and ostensible border. The only 3 star Michelin in Alsace/Lorraine at the time. No vino for me a rising high school frosh, but WHAT A MEAL and what a beautiful setting. Between courses I wandered the grounds beside the little brook; still the most amazing setting for a restaurant I have ever experienced. And believe me I've been to a lot of restaurants in my 45 years. This would be a TOP meal regardless of the food for the setting alone. That the food was basically as perfect as man and woman can make it assures this meal will never be supplanted from #1 on this list, despite whatever Thomas Keller pulls off next!

2) 11 June 1994 The night before I was hooded at Stanford

Fleur de Lys, San Francisco with my parents, my treat. FYI Genius chef Hubert Keller was the patisserie chef at Auberege d'Ille back in 1977, as he grew up there; kinda alpha and omega ain't it. Forget his Vegas digs; the pink tented room is still the bomb, even after the fire.

3) Any meal I ever had at the late lamented and far too short-lived Alain Rondelli off Clement.

And yes Jean-Luc was the greatest maître d' I have ever met. On my second visit there with grad school cohortmate Jeffery Erickson, he remembered our names, gave us the same window table, and brought our pre-dinner drink orders without so much as asking what we wanted. Plus his wine pairing suggestions were always so challengingly unique yet delicious. Not every Parisian is an asshole.

4) Any and Every Hot Fresh Lobster Roll at pretty much any roadside stand on the Atlantic between Boston and Portland, Maine

It's way way cheaper, wicked easier to eat, and there's a lot more lobster meat! D'Oh!

5) BBQ from Morris BBQ and Steakhouse, 16th Section Road, Oktibbeha County, MS!

Every pictures tells a story and these are mine.

Honorable Mention: A memorably late evening at Chez Panisse with my Harvard Noho "roommate", Chuck Forbes. Yeah we were late for the second seating, which meant we got a kitchen tour after dinner because no one else was around and they knew we appreciated the cuisine!

Next time My 3 favorite cookbooks ever. No, this well worn classic doesn't break into our Top 3, but I do live in Starkville and I will honor the amazing legacy of Mr. CC.

In the future, for better or worse, two photographic essays on recent meal preparations.

This post is dedicated to my new friend, John T. Edge. Someday we'll be together at Taylor Grocery in catfish and hush puppy heaven. It WILL be a doozie, I do declare.

The sweet smell of success.

2009-06-28T01:03:00.006-05:00

Grits ain't groceries.

2009-06-27T12:03:00.007-05:00

In honor of its republication in a new and improved version, I would like to reconsider John T. Edge's 2000 Hill Street publication Southern Belly, almost a decade on. I haven't seen the new one yet and do hope that it both expands upon the original as well as corrects some major oversights like Appalachian Southern Food dude! Just because they are poor WASPs doesn't mean they don't exist. Ask Evans and Agee.

I mean c'mon Fresh Mountain Rainbow Trout: Fried, Smoked, Pan Seared, Sauteed, or Oven Roast. Surely Frank Stitt said something about this to you as well! I suspect you spent too much time listening to Chapel Hill Sociologists and their marketing map of the New South. Fine, but they snobby flatlanders who don't understand 'dem 'dar hills. Just sayin'.

I take your introductory "it's my book" (xii) to heart. But Bro you can't have it both ways! Either's it's my idiosyncratically personal view of food in the South or it really is "The Ulitmate Food Lover's Guide to the South." They definitely t'ain't the same thing. But I will give you a pass since you did at the least visit Roanoke and mention the Texas Tavern (242–43). My Mom told me tales of dropping by there after school for takeout through the window. Proper young ladies did not enter such establishments in the Fifties. But they also preferred Perry Como to Elvis Aron Presley. Can't win 'em all!

While this books in an important part of Edge's culinary legacy. it is but one leg of a tripos. Lest we forget, Edge is also an accomplished journalist/editor working with such diverse publications as Gourmet, Southern Living, The Oxford American (out of Little Rock strangely enough) and The New York Times. Finally and most importantly he is a scholar visionary, who brought forth the Southern Foodways Alliance as its first employee and long-time Director and who regularly holds court on the Square in Oxford: upstairs at City Grocery Bar or jawing with Currence downstairs over the classic Shrimp and Grits preparation. THIS will be his major legacy, especially all the good work folks did helping the Katrina recovery efforts vis-a-vis local NOLA restaurants like Willie Mae's Scotch House.

Veni, vidi, omnivori.

Party out of bounds.

2009-06-27T07:24:00.009-05:00

T-minus 11 hours and say 3 minutes until The Three Estates Do: Town/Gown/FPCS Handbells & Choir kicks it here at 119 Edgey. It's all brought to you by us:

Still got a few last items to set up for cooking this afternoon. Have to sweep the patio and carport again. But otherwise, we're good to go. A big photo album of the event will mount sometime Sunday.

Our Party Music

Hour 1 Music from 1909 (honoring Elizabeth Gwinn who turned 100 last month)

"The Whiffenpoof Song" and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" both written in 1909 plus performances by artists born in 1909 like Benny Goodman, Ruby Keeler, Victor Borge, Carmen Miranda, and Gene Krupa.

Hour 2 Reich Re-Mixed

Hour 3 My 1980s v. 4.1.a

Hour 4 Son[y]a's Sisters Solidarity Mix v 2.0.a Getting to Happiness

After that who knows? Maybe Sonic Youth, The Eternal, Japandroids, Post-Nothing, Telekinesis, Telekinesis!, or The Thermals, Now We Can See

and so it goes . . .

I call out her name.

2009-06-22T22:58:00.004-05:00

In the toughest title battle yet, The Thermals emerge champs as usually happens: 'cuz when you're hot, you're smokin'. They took down an extremely quality field: The Clash, "What's My Name," Guided by Voices, "Your Name Is Wild," The Kinks, "Did You See His Name","Lynyrd Skynyrd, "What's Your Name", Terence Trent D'Arby, "Sign Your Name," The Velvet Underground, "I Heard Her Call My Name," and The White Stripes, "Sister, Do You Know My Name?"

Q: What's this all about then?
A: My "second" book was to have been called “WHAT’S IN A NAME?”: IDENTITY, PROPERTY, AND THE EARLY MODERN NAMING FUNCTION 1485–1832 and should have been entering post-production about now. This book project modeled on David Cressy's magisterial Birth, Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England was at once much more focused in topic while also diachronically much wider in scope. The book concept spun out of an unpublished essay entitled “Tom, Dick, and Francis”; or, The Trouble with Harry: Status Anxiety amongst the Gentry in Early Modern England. This essay itself served as a bridge away from dissertation work on alehouses and theaters. We still visit the world of the Boar's Head Tavern in the second tetralogy but more with an eye to Hal and his many concerns about class, status, and patrilineage. Following from a seemingly toss-away neologism, "Tom, Dick and Francis" we ask the Hitchcockian question of Hal just what is The Trouble with Harry?

Central to the answer was my theorization after Foucault of an early modern naming function. And that's why this post exists at all. My "first" book is still in the works. My own academic status is rather ambiguous, but I continue to be a publishing scholar.

My latest work in collaboration with Bryan Reynolds is a melding of my "naming function" with his transversal poetics providing we hope through "investigative-expansive modes"

to show that certain signature theoretical contributions of structuralism and poststructuralism have definite precursors in the early modern English understanding of the proper name with respect both to semiotic-semantic systems and subject formation. Moreover, another aim of this book is to establish more explicitly the historical trajectory of this book . . . between the premodern and the modern . . . to graph the various lines of critical inquiry into subjects, subjectivity, and subject matters. (51)

So we pursue a basic question, "What's in a name?"

One of my very smartest friends asked "what is your naming function?" And he is not alone, though many of my grad school buddies already hipped to the Foucaultplay at work in my neologism. In short from our "Glossary of Transversal Terms":

the naming-function replaces the problematic term "name" to emphasize the many uses of proper naming. . . . The naming-function reveals that proper naming need not operate simply in one direction, from sociopolitical conductors of state power to subjects, but also in reverse, differently, multi-directionally, and multi-dimensionally. (280)

Focusing on a class bias "the naming-function encodes, eludes, and scrambles power relationships among the aristocracy, much as the the author-function admits ownership of texts, yet obscures the state's punishment of their transgressions" (61). For more, read the book. Thanks!

Thus we come to my Declaration of Scholarly Principles (with a wink of the eye to CFK and JL).

1) I promise never to follow a trend out of a desire for publication or advancement. In fact, I steadfastly promise to actively ignore trends in my own work regardless of the affects on my so-called career.

2) I vow to continue doing cutting edge interdisciplinary work in both the fields of early modern studies and popular culture of the twentieth century. I shall follow the questions and interesting bugaboos wherever they lead me: be it to the creation of 90s noise rock as a non-generic cultural phenomenon, the role of hops in the production of English national identity, a minor neologism which tinkers with a common adage but plainly hides deeper cultural anxieties about status, a re-reading and re-reading of the phrase "Out of sack" until every possible meaning has been parsed and squeezed from the literary shepherd's bag or The Mekon's interest in traditional country, disavowal of Alt-Country, and creation of a more politicized "Insurgent Country."

3) I vow to use theory as it was intended as a useful explanatory tool not as a system for living or some kind of ideological purity test.

4) I vow to write in clear and concise modern English that attempts to be both witty and wise.

5) I vow to live the life of the mind to the full, joyously and with all the vigor I can produce.

Desunt nonulla.

Works Cited

Bryan Reynolds et al., Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Where is my mind?

2009-06-22T10:34:00.004-05:00

Been a very busy pre-Father's Day week what with a lot of projects just starting up. Here''s tidbits and links on some stuff I'm doing now.

Perfect Sound Forever
As always, my Kevin Shields interview is in the latest issue. I've got a really long interview with Robert Ellis Orrall forthcoming maybe next issue maybe the one after. I'm working on pieces on Sonny Boy Williamson II myths and truths, the Dust-to-Digital label, and most intriguingly a new label Bifrost Arts founded by a former student of mine, now an RUF minister at UConn.

Pop Matters
I'm writing a few things specifically for this online zine. More about them later perhaps.

Mississippi Musicians
I'm pitching in to help Nancy Jacobs with this labor of love site by updating some of the web pages (Garrison Starr and Blind Melon should be up by the end of the week) & writing some new pages esp. for blues artists like Eddie Cusic and Willie McTell as well as a brand new page for Starkville's own composer, Albert Oppenheimer, a recent graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music!

Beer and The Bard
That whole book project is rewriting itself as we speak. But seriously major rethink and revision on-going. Thanks to Tom and Bryan for four extra eyes and three and a half extra brains!

Some Girls.

2009-06-22T06:00:00.003-05:00

Now—that we've got Father's Day safely behind us—for something completely different . . .

Her: "It just has to be blue!"
Him: (under his breath) "Damn!"

Missing you.

2009-06-19T07:08:00.005-05:00

So I've slowly been enjoying Continuum's book by Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music: A History, as bedtime reading. Last night in typically restless fashion, I went index-surfing. When I saw the stuff re: Merzbow, I just had to turn to page 153 . . . but wait it didn't exist.

Oops. Somewhere between 1/3 to 1/24 of that quire missing depending on their production processes and paper sheet size. Far from the worst piece of book production I've ever owned (Thanks U of Ca Press), but still missing end notes for previous chapter and the first 6 pages including the thesis gone for the Merzbow chapter apparently gone. Julian Cope would probably be more upset about the former somehow! I rifled through the book in its entirety; no, not just a production foul up with papers reshuffled.

Fortunately, the book's editor, David Barker, is an acquaintance. So I sent him an email, outlining my problem. If that name sounds familiar, then you probably own one of his pride and joys, a volume in the fan-tastic (!) 33 1/3 series. I'll report back on whatever resolution we come up with.

UPDATE (9:55 AM): Response Time 1 hour 37 minutes. New copy of book being mailed next week gratis. Woo Hoo as Damon Albarn croons!

Not given lightly.

2009-06-17T09:51:00.005-05:00

Yet another reason Chris Knox is just "a seminal figure in rock and roll everywhere" as Andrew Cox from The Fauves intones. Total Pro (watch him handle the dreaded broken string), totally humble (I love the "you've never heard of me have you? that's alright" intro) and what an a capella voice plus the hammy crowd enhancing stuff is just so obviously heart felt. From the Australian Broadcastng Corporation's Recovery (1997).

Why was this song only #13 all time in New Zealand? Knox had a stroke last Thursday. Get better soon CK! For fans of the Dunedin sound and Flying Nuns everywhere.

It says here (different version).

2009-06-17T08:54:00.006-05:00

Stay tuned to this site in the coming weeks for potential news of an expansion in/redefinition of the TNA universe as well as possible multimedia streaming on the blog. Yeah we tried it unsuccessfully back in 2004, but the technology is much more of a go now.

In the meantime investigate any of the following with my rock steady guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

Among the Oak & Ash, S/T
Josh Joplin + Garrison Star cover such traditional songs as "The Water is Wide" and "Peggy-O" plus one by the Smiths.

Booker T, Potato Hole
Best instrumental rock record in more than coon's age. Drive-By Truckers groove on favorably in place of the MGs. while Neil Young as ever lays down one tastefully blistering solo after another. How hot is THAT GUY! Plus Booker T learned Pro-Tools from SF State extension class, cool beanz.

Japandroids, Post-Nothing
2-piece out of West Vancouver; Hey Y'all They're plauing Oxford's Blind Pig July 3rd!

Poacher, S/T
Starkville's newest hitmakers and another fine production from Scary Uncle.

Telekinesis, Telekinesis!
Great stuff from the Great Northwest on Merge! Thanks to Carrie Brownstein for this tip. Recording project of Seattle's Michale Benjamin Lerner.

The Thermals, Now We Can See
Latest rocker from Portland's indie "super group" and a favorite of my favorite former Rhodes Scholar (yeah you tbmueller King of the EVOO). Now if we can just get Johnny Marr on the second guitar.

Venice is Sinking, Azar
Atmospheric tuneage outta Athens with the mighty Big Grey on percussion.

Wussy, S/T
Might just be the record of the year to date.

Dropping local

The Jarheads, Thursday and Chapman & The Fantasticks, Friday. BE THERE!

Out.

As time goes by.

2009-06-16T07:08:00.000-05:00

You must remember this: the gang's all here down by the Charter Oak!

The all-conquering Maclay "A" team, undefeated Champions of 1st annual Democrat-sponsored Big Bend Brain Brawl. Uniquely, a feat never to reoccur as tourney grew with success and was split into brackets and then later seeded into competitive flights based on size and prior showings, we beat every other competing team including runners-up, Godby "A", whom we simply whomped! Maclay "B" cruised nicely into show position.

Rumor has it I was a useful player or so the Sunday Tallahassee Democrat front page lead headline read: "IT'S MEXICO FOR GE & CO." accompanied by a much larger version of the photo below. Most of my fifteen minutes gone before I'm 18!

Various honoraries. Note 4 National Merit Scholars out of 42 or 5 out of 43 counting Allison Grow. Eat your heart out JA and Prep!

My Key Guys!

Class of 81 Last Will & Testament including "unofficial" class history from 1st to 12th. Sponsored by Piper-Sonoma.

June 5th 1981 Graduation night Post-ceremony post-valedictory address. Sheer Joy!

Ug(g)ly: a TNA gift card.

2009-06-12T23:33:00.001-05:00

Getting jiggy with the title of a great tune from Garrison Starr's criminally underappreciated Geffen debut Eighteen Over Me. Why? Cuz the kind folks at whoogaboots are offering a $30 discount credit to readers of The Nevermind Aesthetic. This is a legitimate offer. Now I personally would never be caught dead with a pair of UGGs but to each his or her own. I compared their converted prices against Zappos and they are favorable even before the discount.

SO dear reader you ask, what must I do? Simple order at the above URL and enter the code AESTHETICS in the coupon code box in the cart. No conditions apply, and they ship worldwide. You're welcome and thanks Sarah!

The juke.

2009-06-10T20:57:00.002-05:00

Opening Night Show review

The Grand re-Opening of the Bistro & State Theater complex was yesterday. Last night the State became a classic juke with a large LA-Z-Boy Barcalounger prepared for main act Blind Mississippi Morris, master of the "MS Saoxophone"! Guy, gals, and esp. one lonely balding guy from NH down on contract business in West Point got down on the dance floor to various blues classics from John Lee Hooker to Howlin' Wolf to BB King to Junior Wells and lest we forget, Little Walter and Sonnyboy Williamson too or is that II?

The backing band becomes the house band of the State AKA The Crooked Letters. as in crooked letter crooked letter i cl cl i humpback humpback i (cf. Afroman). Two requirements to be in: born in MS and work at the State or Bistro. Tonight's version was the extended and at some times unwieldy 6 piece with special guest sit-ins as well, like Scott "Scooter" Thomas. The stand up bass is nice but unnecessary and I think the rhythm guitarist should also know slide. So you're back to a four piece hopefully in the future. Still fun was had by all and we did it to the blues in MS, imagine that!

Time has come today.

2009-06-10T20:18:00.005-05:00

The "official" Bistro @ State Theater Mix
Sam & Dave-Hold On! I'm A Comin'
The Jimi Hendrix Experience-All Along The Watchtower
The Who-A Quick One Whiles He's Away (Rock'n'Roll Circus version)
The Band-The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
The Box Tops-The Letter
Diana Ross & The Supremes-Love Child
Otis Redding-I've Got Dreams to Remember
Commodores-Sweet Love
The Chambers Brothers-Time Has Come Today (LP version)
Dusty Springfield-Natchez Trace
The Rolling Stones-Stray Cat Blues
Sly & The Family Stone-Dance To The Music
Little Feat-Time Loves A Hero
Traffic-Dear Mr. Fantasy
Lynyrd Skynyrd-The Ballad Of Curtis Loew
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band-Our Love Is Drifting
Elvin Bishop-Fooled Around and Fell In Love
Wet Willie-Keep On Smilin'
Big Star-Mod Lang

The internationale.

2009-06-10T09:15:00.004-05:00

The I Bistro/State Theater complex has been for too long been the sleeping giant of Starkvegas eating and entertaining options. It finally looks like a crew knows what they're doing and might get it right. Financial backing from the Bryan family of West Point can't hurt either!

I went with my dad about an hour and a half after their 11:15 am ribbon-cutting ceremony. 1st impressions of the dining area were all positive. Where Doe's had the unadorned feel of an unloved institutional cafeteria; they've replaced some tables with booths, added mood lighting and a whole lot of music-related art on the walls and in some cases (metal rooster sculptures) floor, and thus generally made the place feel like a downtown Tribeca glass and brick warehouse-type place. Oh yes, and the menu has real variety, good for vegetarians and more generally people who don't like only steak and potatoes. Alas, Cisco failed them on the oyster delivery, so instead of my desired Poboy I settled for Catfish & fries with a side of slaw a more than ample portion and at $7 a real price point beater. Ty Thames having set the local blue plate special value at $8. They beat Chef Tyler a bit (Oyster PoBoy 7 versus 9) but then he local sources all his food and wouldn't have run out of oysters so early. so we'll charitably call it a draw all around. Both fine lunch places, just somewhat different clientele and different purposes to the two establishments. Dinner will be an interesting later investigation as they also feature pizza and pasta then.

Hard to be believe but the 2 blocks of downtown Starkville now have 4 quality lunch options!

Their new executive chef is JJ or Double J seen here in more relaxed climes sans his black uniform.

Not only is he the executive chef but he drums in their House band, The Crooked Letters. You know Mississippi: M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback-humpback-I. Apparently to be in the band you have to hail from MS and work at the venue. They would back Blind MS Morris on opening night about which more later.

You're the top! (part 2)

2009-06-09T12:32:00.009-05:00

Best of 2009 mid year report

Singles
The Jarheads, "In the Ground"
The Leftovers, "Telephone Operator"
Booker T., "Hey Ya"
Japandroids, "Heart Sweets"
Telekinesis, "Coast of Carolina"
The Thermals, "Liquid In, Liquid Out"
Sonic Youth, "Leaky Lifeboat" (For Gregory Corso)

Albums
Japandroids, Post-Nothing
Booker T., Potato Hole
Wussy, S/T
The Thermals, Now We Can See
Telekinesis, Telekinesis!
Neil Young, Fork in the Road
Venice is Sinking, Azar
Poacher S/T(?)

Still working on jazz and blues side of things

Reads

Fiction
Ron Rash, Serena
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

Non-Fiction
Elijah Wald, How The Beatles Destroyed Rock "n" Roll; An Alternative History of American Popular Music
David Stubbs, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen
Dean Wareham, Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance

Feel free to alert me to things you think I missed in the comments section. I'm always on the lookout for good new reads and listens!

Angels & fuselage.

2009-06-08T10:05:00.010-05:00

Huh? No, not a serious discussion of Air France Flight 447, but rather a pan of the devastatingly horrible latest film by Ron Howard to enter the cloyed atmosphere of Dan Brownia. Ironically it immediately puts me in mind of one of the great American movies of the 1970s: Don Siegel's 1971 masterpiece, Dirty Harry.

Huh? you say again. Laconic hero played by era-defining icon races from one well known site to another in a cat and mouse chase with a perverse serial killer. The differences beyond the obvious Rome versus San Francisco setting; Siegel's tight crisp blocking and easily digestible montages versus Howard's herky jerky handheld operas that read like a Greenglass film on 'roids (see much of first 30 minutes of film as well as McEwan's parachute descent to St. Peter's Square). Furthermore, Siegel builds tensions through the Fink's scripts showing us believable distances to be traversed by an ever tiring Eastwood. He actually sweats on screen. Any perspiration we perceive on Hanks has been backlit by Haskell Wexler and skillfully applied by makeup & wardrobe from an atomizer. Yes you can get from church to church to church in the time allotted, but it all still seems unreal, staged, extremely photogenic and all around too good to be true.

What to say about this mess of a movie? In places it's downright beautiful, they certainly put the money they spent on the film on the screen. The recreations of various iconic spots in Roma are believable. Director Ron Howard is at his best in painterly moments where he can compose shots like a grand master. Think the scene when the Camarlengo (Ian McEwan) is invited to the conclave by the College of Cardinals. He enters the Sistine Chapel and they face him arrayed for all to see like a Raphael or Velasquez masterpiece. Here the movie shines as it does in some of the acting perfirmance specifically Armin Mueller-Stahl as the crafty veteran Cardinal who pursues gentleness at almost all costs and Stellan Skarsgard as the Germanic head of the Swiss Guards. Even McEwan shows greater depth of range than he did as a young Obi Wan Kenobi. At least it's an improvement over The Da Vinci Code, not that that's much of a recommendation.

So the biggest problem with the whole Dan Brown mania is his own self-presentation as a popinjay. He sells his books based on absurd claims about how detailed is their research and how accurate his portrayals. Like in Angels & Demons fer instance [THERE BE SPOILERS COMING] where Langdon and Vittoria discover the secret passageway between Castel San Angelo and the Papal Apartments of Vatican City. Well yes there is such a passetto; only it's no secret, below is a map from a decades-old Michelin Guide to Rome clearly marking said passage way for tourists. Sorry Dan you lose.The scans do not lie: You are a buffoon and a fraud. But don't worry nobody will ever get their ill-spent money back.

Final verdict: Without the aid of antimatter device, this movie crashes and burns on impact. Avoid like the plague. Read a real historical mystery thriller like Waterland, The Daughter of Time, or The Wench is Dead. Or go see Possession or The French Lieutenant's Woman instead.

Beautiful day.

2009-06-08T08:13:00.002-05:00

It was such a day indeed last Saturday in Jackson. There was some sort of hubbub downtown with roads blocked off higgledy-piggledy either to do with the African-American rodeo being in town or maybe it was some kind of Juneteenth celebration. The one place that didn't make sense was closing Pascagoula for 1 block in front of the Court House unless they were expecting a demonstration later. But eventually we wound our way around the hulk of the King Edward and back under the Planetarium to the newly sited and improved MMA. As part of our two day overnight Jackson stay we took in some exhibitions at the Mississippi Museum of Art; or better yet, a exhibition and two space-filling installations which were fine but a bit misleadingly advertised by said museum. In other words, if you drove their specifically to see Eudora Welty in New York due to their web page buildup, you have a right to complain vociferously despite the lack of an admission charge. one exit hallway with 30+ silver nitrate gelatin prints does not an exhibition make. Nor does it work since with one exception the most compelling images have nothing to do with New York! More on these pictures after Dufy review.

A Little Background on the Artist

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) was a a Fauvist painter who eventually experimented with more Modernist trope yet never really partook of Impressionism. Moreover beyond being a painter, he was an extremely influential figure in the world of haute couture through a collaboration with Paul Poiret and became one of the great innovators of twentieth century textile design in partnership (1912-28) with the Biachini-Férier firm of Lyon, France. His influence spread across all types of patterns from animal to floral and on to merely geometric.

[Printed Linen ca 1920, courtesy of V&A museum]

His 1920 silk brocades based on the woodcut llustrations he did for Guillaume Apollinaire's Le Bestiarie, ou Cortège d'Orphée literally started the stampede toward animal print designs as later work with B-f would lead to floral imprints and the like.

His innovations in the technical side of reproducing tints on textiles cannot be overstated, especially through use of the fiche card technique to color contrast tints of duplicate designs.
.
In terms of painting, Dufy's achievement stands on his experimentation with separation of form and color. Standing on the jetty at Honfleur nearby the lighthouse, he noticed a young girl promenading in a bright red dress.

[This image is from the reverse perspective of the one shown in the exhibition but you get the concept]

Ultimately he concluded that impression or memory of color far outlasts any concept of the shape of the object observed. He furthered this theorizing with discussion of a variety of colors brought on by a variety of lights. Two important ones were local tone or the color of a particular object and ambient tone the color that bathes scenes as a whole. With respect to light, he believed "Light is the soul of color . . . . without light, color is lifeless."

Some of the special finds of this exhibition included the following:

Anemones

A whimsical textile print of real "Sea" horses.

A Dufy-inspired dress

Back to Welty and Coast-based artists

Welty's photos show a sharp eye for detail and an interest in the intimate details of everyday working life. However, only the Homeless in Union Square photo from New York rises to the level of her work chronicling African Americans in the Deep South. The Four coast artists "exhibition" is almost equally throwaway except more time and care has been spent mounting it in lighted and recessed viewing cabinets in the entry hallway beside the MMA gift shop.

Having finished off our high art portion of the trip we headed to the Cherokee Inn's no locale for lunch and to catch game 2 of FSU's Super Regional versus the Arkansas Razorbacks. We won't dwell on the outcome of game or series as it was an exciting nail biter. Besides Ole Miss has gone home and Southern is in!

In jackson.

2009-06-05T21:31:00.008-05:00

Had lunch at Mexico Tipico while watching the first rain delayed bit of Super Regional Game #1 between FSU and Arkansas. I had Lunch Special #12: Taco Salad and Dad had #16: Chicken Fajitas.

The Cabot Lodge Millsaps is overrun, and I was lucky to be able to book a room. It's kinda trippy as the two groups clogging the Great Room are The Mississippi Association for the Deaf and the Jehovah's Witness "Keep on the Watch!" program. Spending early Father's Day weekend down in Jackson. After arriving in Flowood we peeled of on Ridewood Rd to Old Canton to County Line and back to the Everyday Gourmet. Yes, I know Pear Orchard would have been shorter but we wanted to see what the gas price at Kroger was. Got Mom her O Olive Oil infused with Meyer lemons. Then browsing at Lemuria and finally dinner in the room a take out CBGB's from Sal & Mookie's. That was appropriate because my college roommate's last apartment in Manhattan before buying a house outside Greenwich, CT was on the NE corner of the intersection of Mulberry & Houston. Walk 1 block north on Mulberry and turn right and CBGB and OMFUG's sign was visible about 3 short blocks away.

Going to the Mississippi Museum of Art tomorrow morning for two exhibitions: Raoul Dufy: A Celebration of Beautyand Eudora Welty in New York. Then on to the The Cherokee Inn for Game 2 of FSU versus Arkansas Super Regional.

Back stabbers and g.e.'s top 10 singles

2009-05-30T06:38:00.001-05:00

As May draws to its inexorable close, we'll end the photographic 45s essays on a high note.

B-side The Seeds, "Pushin' Too Hard"

Like all good lists, the one below is a of a particular moment in its "synchronicity." It is not a list of the 10 best singles ever made (well except for entries 1-3 but then that was obvious!) but rather of my 10 favorite singles to listen to. I've added 3 honorable mentions for a nice round baker's dozen. The last singles removed from earlier versions of this list: The Box Tops, "The Letter" & The Grass Roots, "Temptation Eyes." I decided some of the latter's credit was blowback from the Blake Babies's fantastic cover and that wasn't right. As to the former, Alex Chilton doesn't need my approval to maintain his cool! Without further adieu . . .

My Top 10 Singles (anything but Long Players)

1 Freda Payne, "Band of Gold"
2 The Clash, "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais"
3 Otis Redding, "That's How Strong My Love Is"
4 Funkadelic, "One Nation Under a Groove"
5 The O'Jays, "Back Stabbers"
6 My Bloody Valentine, "Feed Me With Your Kiss"
7 New Order, "Blue Monday" the original "floppy" 12" (FAC 10)
8 The Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP (New Hormones 1/Mute 9122) esp. "Boredom"
9 Screaming Trees, "Flashes" Change Has Come EP (SP 48)
10 The Three Degrees, "When Will I See You Again?"

Honorable Mention

The Beach Boys, "In My Room"
The Beatles, "She Loves You"
Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"

I'd love to see your list in my comments sections; there's always good old songs to remember and new ones to discover!

you're the Top, not!

2009-05-29T23:32:00.003-05:00

The past two weeks my daily visits have been way up, still not anything that would get noticed by a serious nethead but quadrupling hits per day is a step forward. How would I know? Sitemeter, my own personal Panopitcon. much of this is due, of course, to Simon kindly linking to my entry in his "I Hate —" T-shirt competitions. Still a suspicious number of visitors' referrals started at a Google search for this image! Effing Dan Brown.

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss?; or the problem(s) with binary thinking.

2009-05-29T17:05:00.002-05:00

Well not really. as we concluded last time there does seem to be a real shift going on in the music industry. And one can only assume it will affect the way scenes invent and constitute themselves. in a virtual world of MySpace do you still really need a physical locale? of course, at some level you do, but still and all . . .

However, this is also a good time to reassess the way we talk about culture and to get over/past one of my personal bugaboos: either/or binary thinking. Even Williams' famous tri-partite model of culture as emergent, dominant and residual is nothing more really than a 3D bell curve sliced along the y-axis. Factor out the temporal 4th dimension and you've basically another binary opposition UP/down or in /out. Don't get me started on all the subversion and containment nonsense which here rears it's ugly head in early Center research by Hall at others on Resistance Through Rituals and the way it infected the "New Historicism of the late 80s early 90s in my other field.

For example seeing the world in two dimensions or as a reflection of the options provided by two distinct and supposedly opposed choices fails to truly flesh out the complexities of life in its full dimensionality. Now I'm not going to blather on about twelve-fold strings or propose some kind of numeratist GTOC as the 2nd cultures answer to the wholy greil of the GUT. I do not mean to essentialize the study, analysis, discussion, and understanding of popular culture in its many manifestations through varying media for a simple starter cut-off. Rather I seek something like Geertz's notion of Thick Description but wit the caveat that the observer always already affects what he observes yielding moot the notion of Universal Truths & Cycle(s). Sure we must try to mean what we say but we must allow that we often misspeak or at least the linguistically encoded in a lexicon as rich as English's is the probability of noise, misapprehension, indeterminability. The ambiguity which is the true spice of life.

Well I seem to have circled around my topic dropping bunker buster ordnance without making real headway and it's now Friday quittin' time at 3 past 5, so I'll reel in. But we'll come back to these shoals and fish out some conclusions over the weekend. I promised after that only one more topic: the whole idea behind generefication.

Ciao.

Map ref 41n 93w; or, about places in/and space.

2009-05-29T10:05:00.001-05:00

Now that the 7" scanning frenzy has ramped down, I return, at last, to Part deux of an extended meditation brought on by the great 'Nuum debate which occurred elsewhere and was chronicled, theorized, K-punked, woebotted, and impostumed starting here at one of Simon's other places. My intervention , no really more of an extending aside, a theorizing sideswipe, will avoid almost any mention of Hardcore, dubstep, or grime except these I just made. Why? because honestly I have nothing useful to add in that direction to what has already been said before. But the more generic questions of scenes and genres are issues that have plagued my waking hours (and perhaps even some more sleeping ones) since at least 1982 AKA sophomore year in Cambridge.

Back then I wrote an extended and intricate analysis of the Preface to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (162) Surely you know it "Democritus Jr. to the Reader"? A classic case of self fashioning, self-consumptions and several forms of self abuse rolled into one tight prose ball. Yes, I basically re-created Stanley Fish's classic text on same, Self-Consuming Artifacts, which I only discovered after the paper had been returned. Herschel Baker, no slave to fashion, was kind enough not to tell me what he REALLY thought of such conceits at one of our frequent meetings in his smoky Widener carrel. I suspect he and Stan the Man must have had some titanic intellectual brawls over Milton back in the day! But then everybody forgets Fish's first book was a rather straightforward reading of John Skelton's oeuvre: John Skelton's Poetry (New Haven: Yale UP, 1965). Even the master of misdirection himself admits the banality of said book, or at least its title:

Ever since my first book, “John Skelton’s Poetry,” was misclassified by Books in Print as an edition, I have tried to come up with titles that announced (sometimes in words that were too clever by half) that the content between the covers was original and even outlandish. I think I got pretty good at it — “There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too,” “Self-Consuming Artifacts,” “Professional Correctness,” “Is There a Text in This Class?” — but I can’t hold a candle to the headline writers of the New York Post.
—Stanley Fish, "Headline Art," The New York Times April 19, 2009.

There I go again just like the titular Don Juan off topic and away . . .

So back to the harem or at least, a contained space about/in which we can think about the meaning of the concept of "scene."

When speaking of scenes I think of metaphorical homes: musical ones, social ones, spaces and places. But we must remember after Bachelard that the scene as home is nothing but a substitute, a kind of home while still not a home. Because eventually every one leaves the scene whether for the next one, death, a new life in suburbia, or some other conversion experience.

Why are scenes so important to emergent music? And in many ways even more so to residual tones? Raymond Williams would alert us to the fact that as a dominant cultural form, certain musics don't NEED scenes to survive. they have late modern capitalism and all its inherent self-replicating systems and yet the digital bug has gotten inside the analog world and basically crushed it. Kind of like a post-modern Boll Weevil. Newspapers dead and dying, music magazines closing left and right and/or shrinking and "Re-Positioning themselves with the marketplace." A&R types running scared shitless any which way they can trying to figure a doable fiscal model for the 21st century music "industry."

That's at least a start. I want to riff with Simon on Jameson re: time and place. But like many a long jam I've gotten to the bridge on Part 1. Part 2 on the flipside.

Shannon; or, it's a dog people.

2009-05-29T06:38:00.000-05:00

Cue Kasey Kasem's "These Guys Are from England" rant.

I write the songs.

2009-05-28T08:25:00.000-05:00

A Colloquy

Why is this record autographed?
Therein lies a tale.

But it's from you and you still have it?
You're beginning to see the light!

Do Tell
Well, when I was in 10th-12th grade I sang in a local youth choir as the senior member. In fact junior and senior year I was the only member of my class participating so I got all the solos. Something of a minor local celebrity at the time what with various swimming championships, my own local Coca Cola ad, National merit semifinalist, Key club President, soon to be an undefeated Brain brawl team and individual champion, I was frankly a little studette as far as a nerd can be. There was this one girl in choir who kept making the googly eyes. Turns out she had one of the worst cases of puppy love I've ever seen. It got both embarrassing and uncomfortable as she would follow me everywhere silently a few steps behind. That and she was 13 but with a body going on 18 . . . ouch. But then I'm not Wooderson and was never tempted by the gal young 'un. Obviously one just waits for it to runs its natural course, right? Well no I was a smart alecky 16-year-old, so of course I came up with some crackpot scheme to end it quicker. It involved music naturally. I would give her The J. Geils' Band 7" "Love Stinks", and she would come to her senses . . . . D'oH! Of course she would have seen the gift and only the gift, not any subtle message it presented. Note how subtly I underlined the song's title. With a weekend to sleep on it, I wised up and have kept the record as a memento of this event and my near-folly. Summer passed. She entered the local high school and fell in love with a 10th grader who had moved in across the street. Naturally I was "crushed" at the loss of this "relationship". And so it goes.

You make me feel like dancing.

2009-05-27T07:41:00.002-05:00

And now for something completely different . . . or what really caused Watergate, aka, the missing banjo tapes!

2009-05-26T10:20:00.003-05:00

A long-lost friend no found from elementary school (John G. Riley ca. 1972) writes she's enjoying Steve Martin's new album The Crow. I remind her that he opened for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on the Will The Circle Be Unbroken Tour? ca. 1973 at FSU's Homecoming in Doak Campbell Stadium. She replies

yes...'the banjo is a happy instrument,maybe Nixon should have played a banjo things might not have gone so badly for him...'

I dramatize

Scene The White House: 'And Banj-O Was His Name-O [majestic strumming] Name-OHHH. That's aaah aaah aah all folks [extended pause as tape runs] Ah Rose Mary . . . John Dean-O wants to know how that take-O sounded . . . What? . . . Erased?!! . . . HOW MANY MINUTES? . . . ()%&#*($%$U** PINKO Liberal COMMIE _*^%#@#*(*%^& Uncle Joe was RIGHT . . .Get Me Haldeman. Tell Him the Usual Place in 10. [Phone slammed on desk. silence except for drumming of fingers against microphone] . . I'll get you, you . . .' And scene.

Now that's what I call a Foggy Mountain Breakdown!

Lonely boy.

2009-05-26T08:53:00.000-05:00

Misunderstood; or, in memoriam j.w.b.

2009-05-25T22:24:00.000-05:00

Playing the studio wizard a la Dave Barbe to Jeff Tweedy's driven founding visionary from out of an earlier famous indie band a la Bob Mould, Jay Bennett and Barbe probably never got quite their full due for immense contributions to their band's output. Bennett's recent lawsuit, now probably moot whatever its merits might have been, suggested as much.

In Wilco's recording history, there's a great leap forward between the debut A. M. and the follow-up Being There. It's easy to forget after Uncle Tupelo broke up that Farrar and Son Volt were the early critical favorites despite putting out their debut second. Seems like many folks were in some kind of Tra(n)ce.While Farrar continued to twiddle on Straightaways, Tweedy found a new co-llaborator and rushed out a double sold as a single, Being There, in 1996. Wilco never looked back critically or commercially. Son Volt where are you now?

So Wha'appen? Two words—Jay Bennett: multi-instrumentalist, maximal partaker in Greil's "Weird Old America" vibe, obsessive perfectionist studio engineer, but what ears. In retrospect Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's massive critical presence was all about the production business model narrative and not so much the music itself. Never a good thing. I have plenty of friends who love the new Wilco version 3.0.1b and from what I've seen and heard they are a mighty fine and tight band live but the records seem much of a muchness; not fresh and new while still partaking of a nativist musical tradition dating back into the 18th century. That's what Bennett brought to the table and that's why he always will be the "SOUL" of Wilco to me!

I've been pleased to discover some critical movement re-assessing the whole Tweedy v. Bennett thing post-I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. Read esp. the two Chicago "beat" writers, Kot and DeRogatis to see the Sound Opinions coalescing.

So simply I'll close with this after Willie The Shakes

Friends, Amer'cans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Bennett, not to praise him.
The feedback that men do lives after them;
The melody oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Bennett. The noble Tweedy
Hath told you Bennett was slacktivist:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Bennett answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Tweedy and the rest--
For Tweedy is an reasonable man;
So are they all, all reasonable men--
Come I to speak in Bennett's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Tweedy says he was slacktivist;
And Tweedy is an reasonable man.
He hath brought many fans home to Live Nation
Whose very fees did general coffers fill:
Did this in Bennett seem slacktivist?
When that the poor have cried, Bennett hath wept:
Slacktivism should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Tweedy says he was slacktivist;
And Tweedy is an reasonable man.
You all did see that on the Inner Loop
I thrice presented him a Golden gong,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this slacktivism?
Yet Tweedy says he was slacktivist;
And, sure, he is an reasonable man.
I speak not to disprove what Tweedy spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is [breaking] in the coffin there with Bennett,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Fin.

Still the one.

2009-05-25T20:36:00.004-05:00

Following up on the calypso series, this is a random look at the 45s I bought in my deepest 7" phase ca. 1974 (age10)- 1979 (age 15). They will be presented with minimal commentary although they might be arranged in somewhat provocative manners . . . I'm just sayin'. No parts here. Each photo essay will choose one 7" song title as its own.

Ex Officio 7" 20 years after the fact in a new digital media age

Calypso (part v); or, i can't get started.

2009-05-24T07:05:00.000-05:00

What a conceptually great record cover. Kinda makes me yearn for an old Quadrophonic surround sound stereo system.

So THAT'S why they call IT a "JOY"stick!

You might be on a bad day Mr. Shelley, but boy do we want you to keep jerkin' back and forth . . .

Who knew The GREAT ONE had a legitimate alternative career beyond standup and TV gigs. I certainly didn't until I stumbled upon this 45 EP. A quintessentially 50s swingin' artefact.

I close with arguably the greatest mainstream single of the 1980s the last decade in which I bought 45s in any quantity.

If not that one, then surely this.

This concludes Calypso series 1. After a Memorial Day break, I might do a shorter second series focusing more on the heartbreaks of our collections, the stuff we bought when didn't know any better. You know more Maxine Nightingale less MoB, "Max Ernst." You'll be amused by such "faves" as this.

Come as you are.

2009-05-24T00:56:00.006-05:00

A singular teaser for next week's post-Memorial Day photostream of my youthful 45 collecting: good, bad, and ugly. The Emotions, a girl group founded in Chicago 1968, hit #1 with this gem for 5 weeks the summer punk broke—1977. They were seen as proteges of Earth, Wind, and Fire's Maurice White. The finished the year #3 In the Billboard Hot 100 behind Rod Stewart, "Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright)" and Andy Gibb, "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" and ahead of Barbara Streisand, "Love Theme From 'A Star Is Born'." The biggest selling single of the 1970s in the Uk was Wings Nov 1977 charttopper "Mull of Kintyre/Girls' School." As to the most significant singles in the UK in 1977 . . . well I think I might start here with an "official" #2 [this space left blank] but always #1 in our hearts, minds, and phlegm globs and then move onto The Clash, "Complete Control".

No sugar.

2009-05-23T10:18:00.003-05:00

Your band's name in lights . . .well or on the marquee, at least.

Bored fan

You call THAT a Mosh Pit?

Grants as "Main Offender"

Loverboy called and they want their pants back stat!

Junior Keith Moon devil in training!

Get your CD here.

Calypso (part iv); or, some candy talking.

2009-05-23T06:32:00.001-05:00

The Original Dirty South!

C'mon Babee, crunk it up! Just follow the bouncing red codpiece. Hotlanta sez Larry Blackmon You still De Man!

@SR: Yup, the NME schwag is definitely better from cassettes like Pogo A Gogo

to this Feb. '86 offering NME's Big 4.

The Flip side featured Hüsker Dü covering The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" and "Let's Get Small" by Trouble Funk for some classic GoGo grooves.

Old School Virgin: Rare Double A-side

New School Virgin: Wasn't Tom Jones somehow involved with this next single?

Twelve Times You

Q: What do you get when old punks meet Generation Ecstasy?
A: Why a Pink Flag with white labels, of course!

I pulled a track off this delicious slice of vinyl for the CD I produced for the 1st Pop Conference at the EMP.

The tracklistings. Not on your life; that's why they're called white labels! B-sides they're pretty easy to google down to anyway.

The last one's for JP & is another mail order special direct from the UK

You know what. I played it having absolutely no idea what was coming and it sure did . . . thrill me!

Calypso (pt. iii); or, everyday livin'.

2009-05-21T08:59:00.005-05:00

Another Rough Trade Rippah!

Southern Death Cult?

I bought this complicated 7" at Amoeba on Haight in July'96, having heard The Grumpies on Zamfir's Panfltue @ KZSU or a similar show. Ironically a month later, my own address was MS STATE, MS 39762. Saw the Grumpies play one or two incendiary shows B4 they packed it in.

I have no idea what amy or Vince are up to. Triplet seems poised between the magnetic poles of Jackson and Starkvegas. He does the art and has a bunch of music projects: Ming Donkey, Superstar Donkey Donkey, The Band Formerly Known as . . . Waco dead et al. We're still waiting for the White Trash Superman reunion gig.

I said it was a complicated 7". You've seen some of the self-contained schwag. What you haven't seen and won't is the clean white sleeve inside since the gatefold is really an 4X8 poster halved. On the inside are the lyrics and other liner type info. Wanna see it? Get your own then.

Funny thing I live less than a mile from that intersection and I pass by The Octagon House frequently. No music has gone on there in a long long long time.

Hey Triplett! Proof here that you had an impact out west. Pretty good company on that 2003 playlist!

{DATELINE 3:24 PM ADDENDA: Putting away some vinyl I accidentaly uncovered my other piece of "Grumpiana." Here 'Tis:

Calypso (part ii); or, it says here (different version).

2009-05-21T06:07:00.004-05:00

We honor the Classic Penguin look with a quartet in Day Glo Orange kinda.

A great little Oakland band I once placed amongst giants. The flip on this Slumberland split was Rocketship, "It's Going To Be Soon." To paraphrase Bob Pollard, "Long Live Slumberland!"

+1 Cd "and a tacky badge"

When I saw the title of B.1, I immediately bought this ep sound unheard at the late lamentedRed Rhino Records on Goodramgate and rushed back to URY studio's to give it a spin. Ah, York those were some times. Needless to say on the morrow I rushed back into town and bought the Big Boy editions Orange and Green + a Brewin' Up T-shirt now proudly and appropriately hand-me-downed to one of Kicker's Kool Kidz!

BTW, Christopher Hill, a native or York after all, wrote one of my favorite books as an undergrad: The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During The English Revolution.

Hill gets the last words well the penultimate sentence of his conclusion's paragraph. And of course their heft has them leaning to the LEFT!

Calypso.

2009-05-20T07:46:00.005-05:00

An occasional scan through the murky corners of my vinyl collection.

Rumor has it that counterintuitivist extraordinaire Elijah Wald will soon have much to say about this justifiably famous disc in Chapter 14.

We've recently shown NME and Sounds disc, so only Melody Maker was left. This one's February '86. Given my obsession with B-sides no suprrise I prefer the flip artists: The Men They Couldn't Hang and The Housemartins to Marc Almond and Cactus World News. I wonder if Reynolds or Stubss were in any way involved with this disc. [DATELINE 4:21 PM CDT: Relentless TNA follow-up can report that Simon, busy on another IM, disavows all knowledge of that disc, whilst Johnny-come-lately freelancer David fingers ex-NME journo Roy Carr as the "culpri(n)t."]

Perhaps the "rarest" record I own. Certainly the one that travelled the longest to get to me. Out of UK to Australia for sure, where I got it over the Net from a shoppe. And then direct to NE Mississippi.

This one just seemed the most a-Peeling in the pile I pulled. Think I'll head down to the shed and give it a listen. Pig are you coming . . .

Still my pick for greatest single of them all, even in this UK reissue through Demon format.

Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.

2009-05-20T07:41:00.002-05:00

Package, Re-Package, Re-issue.

Thus, Something sorta newish from The Smiths, well not really!

More k-tel "hits."

2009-05-19T17:05:00.010-05:00

3 more quick mixes to pass the time with The first two attempt to trace my musical evolution through the sounds of my fathers (and mothers).

Bulb's Southrun Rawk!

The Chambers Brothers, "Love, Peace, and Happiness"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Ask Me No Questions" (7" version)
The Outlaws, "Green Grass & High Tides"
Rossington-Collins Band, "Don't Misunderstand Me"
Molly Hatchett, "Flirtin' With Disaster"
.38 Special, "Hold On Loosely"
Blackfoot, "Highway Song"
Mountain, "Mississippi Queen"
Little Feat, "Time Loves A Hero"
The Charlie Daniels Band, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia"
The Marshall Tucker Band, "Can't You See"
Elvin Bishop, "Fooled Around And Fell In Love"
Wet Willy,"Keep On Smilin'"
Atlanta Rhythm Section,"So Into You"
Big Star, "Mod Lang" [a song so cool they named literally the best vinyl record store in the East Bay after it]
The B-52's, "Give Me Back My Mna"
The B-52's, "Song For A Future Generation"
REM, "Moral Kiosk"

So Athens, GA happens and then a big left turn (it had to be to the left you know!)

BSR! Vol. 2

Pylon, "Cool"
The dB's, "Bad Reputation"
The dB's, "amplifier"
The Producers, "What's He Got?"
The Producers, "Boys Say When/Girls Say Why"
Superchunk, "My Noise"
Superchunk, "Slack Motherfucker"
Superchunk, "Cast Iron"
Archers of Loaf, "Web in Front"
Archers of Loaf, "Backwash"
John Brocato, "Me and My Kind" [Live on WMSV's Home Grown]
The Moonshiners, "Backlash"
The Mountain Goats, "The House Tha Dripped Blood"
Drive-By Truckers, "Outfit"
Drive-By Truckers, "Your Daddy Hates Me" [Why this song rules here]
Drive-By Truckers, "Never Gonna Change"
Drive-By Truckers, "Hey Ya" [Live 2/15/04 Bottom of the Hill, SF, CA; I suspect Booker T. was in the house that night]

And lastly,
Guitar Hero 300B (a graduate class): Ken Parker Fly Mojo Flame Single Cutaway
reworked from a series originally titled Major Riffage

Gang of Four, "Anthrax"
Band of Susans, "I Found That Essence Rare" [Live peel Session and a personal gift from Poss, thanks ever so much]
Archers of Loaf, "Learo, You're A Hole"
13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me"
Pere Ubu, "Non Alignment Pact"
Spacemen 3, "Take Me To The Other Side"
Spiritualized, "Electricity"
Young Marble Giants, "Brand - New - Life"
Yo La Tengo "Moby Octopad"
Wu-Tang Clan, "The Heart Gently Weeps" (feat. Erykah Badu, Dhani Harrison & John Frusciante)
Deerhoof, "This Magnificent Bird Will Rise"
Deerhoof, "2-Dummy Discards A Heart"
Henry's Dress, "Definitely Nothing"
Hüsker Dü, "Makes No Sense At All"
My Bloody Valentine, "You Made Me Realize"
My Bloody Valentine, "Honey Power"
Fugazi, "Blueprint"
Fugazi, "Bad Mouth"
Flipper, "Ha Ha Ha"
14 Iced Bears, "Cut"
Boredoms, "Hey Bore Hey"
Orthrelm, "Paracet Gjende"
Othrelm, "Paracet Gjende"

Soon a mini-photographic trawl through some of my more interesting 45s. As a brief introduction I present NME's Hat Trick from February 1987:

Track 1 (side not shown): Sly & Robbie, "Taxi Connection"
When You're Hot You're Hot (NME version)

Track 2: Steinski & The Mass Media featuring D.J.E.T., "The Motorcade Sped On" (unreleased track)
Beats and other electronica over Walter Cronkite's reportage of the Kennedy Assasination.

Track 3: Sonic Youth, "White Kross" [live in Tallahassee, Florida]
De Yoof in My House De Cow Haus in my hometown Tallahassee, FL

You know there's been a lot of talk of late in the blog-osphere . . . maybe too much talk. This is not a rebel Song. This song is . . . {recorder Grot leading to Debris Slide as loose tape collects around capstan and eats itself] "White Kr---"!

I grew up in Tallahassee in the San Luis Ridge, where one of the builder/owner's kids—also a classmate—was arrested for burning a cross in the front yard of legendary FAMU head football coach Jake Gaither.

Re: blissblog's request ala Aaron. . .

In memoriam Jay Bennett, the I hate Wilco t-shirt design has been removed. For what it's worth, we "hated" Wilco when they removed Jay and seemingly lost their "soul". Best wishes to everybody on this Memorial Day Eve.

Dirty water; or, oh boston you're my home!

2009-05-18T10:05:00.016-05:00

Of course The Standells were all just L.A. session men. E.M.I. session men, if memory serves. In fact "it was all a frame, they only did it cuz of fame!" Super bonus trivia: Lowell George, he of Little Feat, was a stand-in Standell guitarist briefly in 1966.

Mr. Cheap Trick brought a neat host gift to a dinner party I threw last night (see above and below). We started with a cruditee assortment of marinated mushrooms, pickled jalapeños, pickled garlic cloves, and brined artichoke heart slices with marcona almonds. We also had a couple different cheese: A Camamberazola and this hard orangeish cheese whose Dutch name escapes me. Alas Bath Oliver's are no longer being imported into US, so we settled for Jacob's Cream Crackers and Carr's Rosemary Octagons. The meal was simple: A Heart of Palm salad on a bed of Romaine with Red Bell Pepper and homemade Dill Mayonnaise. Then some Garlic Shrimp Pad Thai finished with some store-bought truffles and Peppermint Earl Grey tea. Check out these leftovers:

But seriously now, back to the banks of the River Charles' and Troy's gift of an antique copy of WAAF's The Beat, an object at once familiar and yet totally alien. More on why I had barely heard of this station and didn't recognize it's call letters in just a minute. But then I left Beantown more or less for good in early August 1985 having arrived 4 years earlier on the first week of September 1981. First of all in a local scene the time between 8/85 and 2/87 is an eternity.

Obviously WAAF had way picked up the quality in two years. The Weekly Top 10 featured 4ad signees Throwing Muses, and old school favorites like Moving Targets and Nervous Eaters of "Loretta" fame Too bad Unnatural Axe, who penned the Immortal couplet "driving around in a staff car, keeping Hitler's brain in a glass jar", wasn't still kicking around.

My Boston Radio Life
So I listened primarily to two stations: WFNX and WBCN. The former had the cool cutting edge vibe, especially due to the interconnectedness with the alternative press, namely the Boston Phoenix, esp. The BAD, the original 1966 moniker of the newspaper which was shifted to title its Arts & Entertainments Listings section. In those pages I first read seriously about Pere Ubu and more relevantly Mission of Burma. More about reading and music in a sec. To this Day FNX remains the only locally-owned radio station in the market. An outlier to the last! WBCN was a little more straight-ahead rock'n'roll, except it had the classic michigass quiz in the morning with losers dancing the "Funky Chicken" and a great evening indie show, "Nocturnal Emissions" also fondly remembered by Troy when living in Providence and then Southern New Hampshire. It also hosted the justly famous WBCN Rock and Roll Rumble. 'Til Tuesday won the 1983 edition beating out such notable acts as Del Fuegos, Lizzie Borden & the Axes, Prime Movers, and Salem 66.

The Oedipal thinking behind avoiding Mother Hahvahd's WHRB as both a listener and a plausible member of staff are so psyche-deep they're best left undisturbed. I did regularly tune into selected "orgies" usually the punk one, anything brass, and anything high modernist or later music-wise. Not for me the Warhorses.

Beyond that nothing much; no interest in AM radio then except for the odd sporting broadcast. Sure there was über popular urban contemporary Kiss 108, but just as a pop culture phenomenon and for the king of area DJs and PDs, Sunny Joe White also of WILD-AM fame.

For all this talk of local radio one station is visibly missing, WAAF, which produced Troy's zine, The Beat! Why? Well it wasn't a Boston station for one thing. It came from beyond the 'burbs, beyond shudder!!! Rte 128 where they lived rural redneck blue collar chodawheads be it from Woooooster or Beverleey or Revere. It would take time for WAAF to successfully penetrate the Boston market and it happened long after I left in August 1985. And there was that stupid tagline "The Only Station That (Really) Rocks": Insecure a little????? Not sure if some simple Worcesterites can make it in Big Bad Boston? That's the funny things about musical "scenes" they involve temporal locations, local politics around geography and class, and sometimes just plain outright absurd demarcations that make no sense at all except to those who declaim them to be extremely important. For example and rapidly crossing the continent, how did one classify Club DV8 in San Francsico: Was it Under Bay Bridge? Nach Transbay Terminal? Was it really simplay another SOMA club? technically yes, but far too close to Bay Bridge to really count that is to far West! Was it a dance club, disco, techno, or did that just depend on what floor you were on and/or whom was spinning on any give evening. The true Zelig of nite clubs!

From 1974-81, WAAF was a classic AOR dinosaur station. For most of the 1980s the station played non-stop rock, sort of. In order to penetrate the Boston market they played MOR fare during the daytime to draw an upscale Yuppie demographic before returning to heavier AOR fare for the local Worcester listeners after drive time. There was one spectacularly failed attempt to become a New Wave 80s station in the spring of 1983. The emergence of FNX at the same time and the brief but dominant role of Top 40 HitRadio WHTT ended this experiment rather quickly.

So that was radio world between 1981-5. Often instead I turned to emergent media, specifically the new video form. Boston was blessed to have a rare commercial video station V-66, which appeared halfway through my senior year in college. Given MTV's market dominance at the time, they often placed exclusivity deals on videos for up to 6 months. So the little guys had to hustle to make ends meet. One approach was lo tech. Play say Purple Rain in studio since Prince was MTV-blocked. Show the record and turntable from directly above, making a point about MTV and its monopolistic practices. The second was to find new material from lesser known, often British acts. Famously, Boston saw a lot of the early black and white Smiths videos before the rest of the US! And soon there will be a video memory of the station:

Here's an on-air clip; check out the Harvard Coop advertisement at 1:23. Kate Bush, the Cure, and Del Fuegos all only $5.69 LP/Cass! Personally I bought all 3 of those LPs there and still listen to 2 of them regularly.

This all leads naturally to My Boston Non-radio musical life
Unlike Tallahassee, Boston had many more avenues and media for musical explorations than an odd live concert or a radio show. I wasn't much of a club maven during my Boston sojourn because I was 17 when I arrived and didn't turn 21 until spring of my senior year in college living a bifurcated existence (drink legally in Florida at 18 but no go in Massachusetts, this before Ronnie R. got home from Bitburg and tied Interstate Highway dollars to raised drinking ages). I did see some all ages show famously MoB at the Bradford Hotel in 1983, but more often than not caught favorite mid-level act gigs at the Orpheum Theater on Hamilton Place just off Tremont. You could always count on seeing Rick O'Casek's Adam's Apple pointing out from behind the Proscenium Arch stage left. Saw many favorite bands there 2 or even 3 times on different tours.

Instead writing on music became another window into this world. At the Coop, I would browse the general interest books in the downstairs Annex, AKA read a section of Xgau's Record Guide, the white one with blue green and red lettering.

Key find: A Tribute to Jack Johnson. I knew Miles but really only up to Kind of Blue and not in the fusion mode. Then traipsed up to the second floor to examine staff recommendations and new releases.

Similarly a least twice a week I browsed the Out of Town News for at least half a hour. In this instance that mean skimming the latest issue of NME and Melody Maker and if really desperate Sounds, unless of course they had a "cool" cover single promo, like this later one with The Pogues, The Pixies, The Sugarcubes, and The Wedding Present.

If this sounds kind of trainspotter-ish, it is. Hey I spent my Spring Break senior year in London (the dollar was then at record strength and essentially 1 to 1 with the pound). Doing what you ask? Why reading back issues of NME and MM to write a paper on punk rock at the British Library's Music Division tucked away along Exhibition Road behind The Royal Albert Hall. You'd have thought those periodicals would be at Colindale, wouldn't you?

I tried writing about it too. My first review in the Indy was a pan of Dylan's Infidels; the hackey sackers on the Radcliffe Quad cut me for over a month. Also reviewed Sam Cooke, Live at The Harlem Square Club and New Order, Low-life and taped a lengthy interview with then up-and-coming Boston singer/songwriter Robert Elliss Orrall, which appeared in a horribly truncated form. The full length original director's cut is forthcoming on Perfect Sound Forever sometime later this year.

What memories from that Club Directory Of course, collectively The Big Dig and the gentrifications around Kenmore Square and Fenway did a number on the local music scene. Scenester extraordinaire JGN, who arrived in 84/5 just as I was leaving, went away to Columbus (the one in OHIO not GA or MS), and now lives again within the friendly confines of the People's Republic of 02138, kindly reported back the following:

TT - exists
Paradise - exists
Western Front - exists

Rat - dead
Bunratty's - dead

I was after the Bradford era.

The latter is gone forever as the new owners of the property are replacing the rooftop ballroom with conference and office space alas; now That's what I call Quality, innit!

Re: creator; or, this magnificent bird will rise

2009-05-17T23:26:00.008-05:00

I've written elsewhere on this blog about the noble demise of the original Sonya's Sisters Solidarity Mix.

Since then I finally had a chance to virtually re-create said mix via iTunes. But it's a new and improved 2xCD model.

Disc 1 Son[y]a's Sisters Solidarity Mix v 2.0.a: Getting to Happiness

Billie Holiday, "All or Nothing At All" The Silver Collection
Aretha Franklin, "A Brand New Me" Young, Gifted, and Black +
Freda Payne, "Band of Gold"
Sinead O'Connor, "The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance" I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Everything But The Girl, "Apron Strings" (Live) Acoustic
Kate Bush, "This Woman's Work" The Sensual World
The Go-Go's "This Town" Beauty And The Beat *
Voice of the Beehive, "Beat of Love" Let It Bee
Penelope Houston, "Bed of Lies" Birdboys
Julee Cruise, "Falling" (Theme from Twin Peaks) Floating into the Night
Sarah McLachlan, "Steaming" Touch
The Sundays, "God Made Me" Blind *
Kirsty MacColl, "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby (She's Having a Baby Soundtrack Version)" Kite
Penelope Houston, "Glad I'm a Girl" The Whole World *
The Avengers, "We Are The One" The Avengers*
Hole, "Violet" Live Through This *
Penetration, "Don't Dictate" Moving Targets *
Bedlam Rovers, "Big Drill" Wallow *
Liz Phair, "Go West" whip-smart*

Disc 2 Sonja's Sisters Solidarity Mix V 2.0b: The How of Happiness

Aretha Franklin with Eurythmics, "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" Who's Zoomin' Who?
Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" Boots
Deee–Lite, "Good Beat" World Clique *
Queen Latifah w/ De La Soul, "Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children" All Hail The Queen
Sarah Vaughan, "The Sweetest Sounds" Sarah Vaughan
Patti Smith, "Gloria" Horses
Siouxsie & The Banshees, "Spellbound" Juju *
Björk, "Jóga" Homogenic *
Sugarcubes, "Birthday" Life's Too Good *
X-Ray Spex, "Germfree Adolescents" Germfree Adsolescents
We've Got A Fuzzbox (And We're Gonna Use It), "XXX Sex"
Delta 5, "Try" Singles & Sessions 1979-81 *
The Slits, "Typical Girls" Cut [Bonus Tracks]
Barbara Manning, "Every Pretty Girl" Lately I Keep Scissors
Michelle Shocked, "(Don't You Mess Around With) My Little Sister" Captain Swing
2 Nice Girls, Spent My Last 10 dolllars on Birth Control and Beer" Like A Version
Indigo Girls w/ Michale Stipe, "Kid Fears" Indigo Girls *
Sleater-Kinney, "Start Together" The Hot Rock *
Garrison Starr, "Ugly" Eighteen Over Me *

Kinda rare 7" featured on Disc 2

Brief Liners
I dropped one track—Consolidated, "Dysfunctional Relationship"—because it was an overly elaborate pun that proved distinctly unfunny. Time Weals All Hounds!

I swapped a couple live for studio tracks "Apron Strings" was a studio single on the original, and "Steaming" was a live cut on the original as well

Key
*=CD-only track
+=CD track substitution

So Hope You're Happy Now!

The in crowd.

2009-05-15T09:39:00.001-05:00

Ramsey Lewis' sofa sweater set jazz classic from 1965 seems like a perfectly inappropriate place to start this rumination on scene versus genre brought on by blissblog's emanations of late.

I specifically picked that You Tube clip for a purpose. Did you watch it? If you didn't go back and push the play triangle. If you knew only the albuum version of this tune, you're probably hipped into Ramsey Lewis as a kind of black version of Dave Brubeck: solid playing but nothing really to write home about. After all he DJs on a "smooth jazz" station in Chicago now. Jazz for the buttoned down set ala the comedy stylings of say . . . randomly . . . no not really – Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby. That's what we call a skin deep analysis [pun intended]. In my old life I also called it a C unless it was poorly written and then the gloves came off and down goes Frazier!

In fact Ramsey, while churning out crowd pleasing hits and being noted for his performance style, is a player of innate gifts, Brubeck is always about weird irregular time signatures like say Take 5/4. Sorry! Sure neither of them is Cecil Taylor, but then who is? and does it really matter?

But to get back to the larger point about genres and scenes and the ilk. You really need to look closely, pay attention and listen hard before you begin to talk confidently about such things. After all The Cos was a more than creditable jazz drummer in his day and he's able to talk intelligently about one of the most idiosyncratic cats who ever lived and a personal Culture God, Lester Bowie. That basically makes up for all the reactionary right wing BS he's been spouting of late. See Cosby understands how to listen to music and talk about it intelligently. Some people really shouldn't be given faux doctorates it gives them the WRONG IDEA! Enough peroration.

This all started as a short note to Mr. RIU&SA

Interesting 2nd piece today which so far I've only skimmed quickly out of blogger dashboard. Did your throwaway bit about few talking about dancing provide a subtle glance at any papers from the almost simultaneous EMP conference, say Douglas' discussion of the figure of DJ? Just wonderin'. The whole scene versus genre distinction is fascinating as it brings up all kinds of issues both synchronic and thus primarily geographical and diacrhonic where tume [sic] and place intersect and get caught up in the vortex of the coninuum.

A short riff on my bugabo Noise. We can pretty well define some basic generic components of it, though there will always be nitpickers and genres can overlap. Some shoegaze is noise but not all noise is shoegaze et cetera et cetera get your Venn diagrams here. And we know two of it mains centers of "production" are NYC and Japan. But start talking scenes and everything is wrong again (sorry I couldn't resist) In Japan each city has its noise scene Osaka eYe Boredoms Tokyo Merz bow et al. hell in Tokyo there are probably prefecture demarcations I would never understand in a lifetime. It's all back to studying gangs a la the 50s youth culture research by Hoggart, Hall et al out of the Birmingham Center.

A quick glance at NYC. No Wave was a specific time and place, esp. when thinking of what Eno "curated" on the scene naming disc and to a slightly lesser extent what Moore and Colley have recently reported on more expansively. today merely secondhand I take it the noise is happening out in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. So not only do you have temporal distinctions to make between 1970s and 2000s let say but also the Welataunschang [If only I had taken that typing class back in high school?] of an "outer" borough as opposed to downtown Manhattan comes into play. Kind of Mike Davis' wheelhouse if he would ever leave the great SouthWest. Enough nattering on but a lot of grist for the mill. Thanks.

Speaking of the 'Nuum do you think David Barker has finished tearing his hair out yet over this "desecration" of his brand "image"? ;^)

Of course it could be worse, you could end up in Simon's mythical neither nor place:

Oh and finally the scene for the In Crowd: Bohemian Caverns Washington, D.C. May 13, 1965 naturally.

Like Byron's Don Juan I can't seem to keep hold of the thread. So this will be a multi-parter; yes I am so a copycat.

Next time the role(s) of space[s] and place(s) in defining scenes and maybe a bit onto genrefication.

Books to look at before I write again

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style
Stuart Hall and Tony Richardson, eds. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain
Pierre Bordieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacle
Bryan Reynolds, Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze After Derrida (I hear pages 51–82 aren't half bad.)

Soundtrack for Further Rumination

Steve Reich, "Drumming" Pt. IV
Skeleton Crew, "Rader, Fish and Kermode"
Unwound, "Sonata for Loudspeakers"
Anthony Braxton, "Third Meeting"
King Missile, "It's Saturday"

Bang, bang, rock & roll (redux); Or, art brut vs. satan.

2009-05-15T07:41:00.005-05:00

Every Picture Tells A Story

It's almost like you were there.

We'll save the real review until we can double dip with the forthcoming CD!

I'm just a singer (in a rock and roll band).

2009-05-13T06:47:00.009-05:00

An old grad school friend recently did the 25 Things meme:

ok, 25 random things about me
Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 7:10pm

1. I live for spectator sports.
2. My true calling is to be a singer in a rock-n-roll band. . . .

It's funny but I remember her expressing the same John Lodge fantasy 22 years ago in the back garden at either Rigg's or Lucio's house or most likely in front of the Humanities Center nee English annex out on Campus Drive by Chi Theta Chi. So to aid and abet this project, I of course made a mix.

THE MJC Rawk Experience

Lucille Boggan, "Coffee Grindin' Woman"
The Avengers, "The Amerikan in Me"
The Avengers, "White Nigger"
Penelope Houston, "Bed of Lies"
Barbara Manning, "Every Pretty Girl"
Two Nice Girls, "Spent My Last 10 dollars On Birth Control and Beer"
Bedlam Rovers, "Big Drill"
Bedlam Rovers, "Star of the County Down"
Siouxsie & The Banshees, "Spellbound"
X-Ray Spex, "Oh Bondage Up Yours!"
X-Ray Spex, "Germfree Adolescents"
The Slits. "Typical Girls"
Pylon, "Cool"
Young Marble Giants, Searching For Mr Right
Kate Bush, "Hounds of Love"
Blake Babies, "Rain" (Demo)
L7, "Pretend We're Dead"
Bikini Kill, "White Boy"
Bikini Kill, "This is Not a Test"
Hole, "Rock Star"
Garrison Starr, "Superhero"
Sleater-Kinney, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone"
Sleater-Kinney, "Light Rail Coyote"

Liners
Lucille Boggan AKA Bessie Jackson—This is one of her more air-friendly offerings as it's merely suggestive rather than crudely explicit. Another song starts "My Nipples are Hard as Diamonds" and goes downhill from there, and you do have to wonder who paid to record that in the 1920s, but she is a Diva.

The Avengers were from SF and fronted by a teen-aged Penelope Houston sporting a blond crew cut she grows up and out and the more zaftig Penelope becomes a neo-folkie star in Germany! And at the Freight & Salvage on the Berkeley/Oakland line.

Barbara Manning another Bay Area fave solo or with her band the SF Seals. Yep, there's a big baseball thing going on here.

Two nice girls is three lesbians from Austin, TX; they also specialize in acoustic mix-ups like "Sweet Jane with Affection" (Lou Reed meet Joan Armatrading) or "I Feel (Like Makin') Love" (Donna Summer this is Bad Company).

Bedlam Rovers yet again criminally overlooked Bay area band, which on one track explores their Celtic roots. I mean c'mon the best band history I could find was in Italian, so now I'm gonna translate it for the poor guy.

X-Ray Spex's Poly Styrene and friends made a day glo punk classic one of the greatest debut albums ever

Ari Up, Palmolive, Viv Albertine, and later Budgie (who also drummed for Siouxie's Banshees) made uncompromising punk rock. They also made a joyously reggae-inflected cover of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"!

Pylon was the greatest band to come out of Athens, GA and everyone from Michael Stipe to Kate Pierson will tell you so. Alas lead guitarist Randall Bewley died from a heart attack at 53 a few months ago.

Young Marble Giants out of Cardiff-area Wales made 1 2/3 full length records and were always sui generis. Colossal Youth was hands down the best disc of 1983. One of the greatest album covers ever, esp. in the Black & white Division. They're so cool they don't need quotation marks for their song title above.

Couldn't find my 7" copy of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" to burn to MP3, so went with the title track from her best album.

Blake Babies were Julianna Hatfield before she became overexposed. Evan Dando was in this band for about three months and plays bass on this demo; another Beantown-area favorite mid-1980s. The other emergent songwriter was John Strohm, now surely the coolest lawyer working in Birmingham, AL!

[Correction 5/20/2009. Dando played on "Lament" Andy Mayer bass here on this Strohm-penned number from the first demo. My physical copy of Innocence And Experience just returned home complete with useful CD booklet after a long time away. Sorry for the confusion.]

And now for the big RRRRIOTTTTT GRRRRRLLL Conclusion . . .

L7 early radio-friendly version of the movement. "Good" (?) Presbyterian that I am, I'm all for somebody bustin' on Falwell, Reed, and their hypocritical ilk. Neither moral nor in the majority!

Bikini Kill: I know I know this is turning into a Julia Styles mopey, misunderstood–teenpic. Still those early records take few prisoners. Look elsewhere for their ratting out Sonic Youth on "Thurston Hearts a Who."

Hole never really got their due because of Courtney's various antics and the whole tidal onslaught that was associated with Nirvana. This record is bitchy but also a pretty "true" accounting of what was happening at Evergreen State College in Olympia, launching pad of so many riot girl rockers like as with the final band

Garrison Starr signed the biggest individual contract ever by an artist coming out of Mississippi, but Geffen was never able to launch her nationally; she's returned from LA and settled into pop country crossover land near Nashville. I've seen her play venues ranging from a back porch at an impromptu house party to a 10,000 seat outdoor amphitheater. Her best gig ever was opening for Cracker in Starkville at Rick's in 1998. She blew them off the stage; of course, it didn’t hurt that her backing band was essentially Wilco less Jeff Tweedy–through the John Stirratt/Jay Bennett Oxford, MS connection. They did the absolute best version of "The Chain" I've ever heard, including Fleetwood Mac live.

Sleater-Kinney: I could listen to Janet Weiss drum (see also Quasi, Heavens to Betsy, & Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks) or Carrie Brownstein play guitar all day long. A sociolinguist by training, Brownstein's NPR media blog Monitor Mix is worth a looksie.

I avoided more obvious choices like Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" or Liz Phair's "Supernova" as well as more well-known female artists like Joan Jett, The Go-Gos, The Bangles, and The Pretenders

Inside out/outside in; or, hold on i'm comin'.

2009-05-12T00:08:00.003-05:00

So I got the following CFP on Wed, 6 May 2009 14:25:54 -0400:

Dear Colleagues,

The American Shakespeare Center, in partnership with Shakespeare's Globe in London, will host its fifth Blackfriars Conference, "Inside Out/Outside In," in honor of Andy Gurr in Staunton, Virginia, from 20-25 October 2009. Registration fee includes tickets to the ASC productions of 1 Henry IV, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Rehearsal by George Villiers (et al); opening and closing banquets; a special presentation by the ASC actors honoring the work of Andy Gurr; and Paul Menzer's Shakespeare on Ice, a play and cocktail party.

We are inviting proposals for papers on topics to do with early modern drama in performance, including but not restricted to the staging, texts, design, repertory, personnel, and the business of plays in early modern England. Paper presentations are limited to 10 minutes (presentation without actors) and to 13 minutes (presentations with ASC actors). Presenters should be aware that they will hear the sound of a thundersheet when two minutes remain and will exit pursed by a bear when time is out.

Submit a 300 word abstract and a short bio to Sarah Enloe, Director of Education, by May 30, 2009. Please include a brief statement saying whether or not you would be interested in having your work in a volume of Blackfriars Conference essays.

Now Andrew Gurr is one of my absolute cultural heroes, even if all he had EVER done was write this. But THEN he also wrote this and helped uncover this for good matter plus a lot else to boot. Quite a career indeed!

It just so happens I had a handy piece about staging one version of The Merry Wives of Windsor! So I sent in the following:

Falstaff at the Garter:
The 1602 Merry Wives of Windsor Quarto as City Comedy

The Merry Wives of Windsor exists in two distinct versions: its first Quarto (1602) and the First Folio (1623). Specifically, the Quarto takes place either in London or an unnamed provincial town, while the Folio version is resolutely located in the royal village of Windsor, hard by the castle. Ironically, the later Folio version might represent the original version of the play as written for the Feast of the Garter in 1597. Sometime later perhaps, Shakespeare might have reworked the play for the commercial stage, hoping to capitalize on the rage for city comedy, which had been developing since the late 1590s. I focus on the Quarto version of the play, which highlights the connections to city comedy, and which I take to be closer to the version performed on the London stage.

Throughout the play Falstaff operates as a prototypical gallant: he wears peculiar dress, makes passionate love to assorted women, is a notorious gamester, and resides at the Garter. But Shakespeare inverts the typical gallant situation by having Falstaff, his urban gallant, gulled by the commercial classes of the town. I also connect Falstaff's character to gender considerations. From such gender considerations, we see the underlying metadramatic concerns of The Merry Wives of Windsor, a play very much concerned with contemporary London theatrical practices whatever town it supposedly occurs in. The Quarto's "location" allows Shakespeare to comment upon the class tensions at once central to theatrical alehouses as illustrated by the pairs Sly and the Lord and Hal and Francis and important to the burgeoning contemporary city comedy, a genre which directly links the alehouse scenes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the coffeehouse scenes of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Short Bio

G.E. Light received his PhD from Stanford in 1994. He was Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University from 1996-2003. His publications include "Beer and The Bard" (1996), "All Hopped Up: Beer, Cultivated National Identity, and Anglo-Dutch Relations, 1525–1624” (1998), "Falstaff’s Cups of Sack: New Readings of Henry V II.iii.25" (2002), reviews in Albion, Renaissance Quarterly, and Text, and a "virtual" dialogue with Bryan Reynolds on "the naming-function" in chapter one of Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (2009), published today! Currently he blogs The Nevermind Aesthetic and is a freelance journalist focusing primarily on music and publishing in a variety of venues including Dusted Magazine, Stylus Magazine, and Perfect Sound Forever, and a DJ at WMSV. He produces record reviews, was a columnist writing about "Seconds-Perfect Moments in Pop", has done artist interviews with Marshall Grant, Kevin Shields, Plastic People of the Universe, Robert Ellis Orrall, and written some longer think pieces about such topics as the hidden history of Southern urban blues and 90s Noise Rock.

Post-nothing.

2009-05-10T06:12:00.001-05:00

As good friends should, my pal Jason hipped me to the new Japandroids disc, now entering the Pantheon of greatest Before and After Band names, right there with Brian Jonestown Massacre! I promise to make this review "a shortie" to honor largeheartedboy. You might almost say it will be practically a post-nothing. Which puts me in mind of my favorite puncatuation joke (you didn't know there was such a thing, did you?):

This was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was good-natured; by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.

"Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph."

Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter 2

With 24 years in in non-commercial radio, of course, I'm gonna play "Sounds A Lot Like" for shorthand and indie snobbery's sake. A 2-piece Japandroids are immediately reminiscent of Mecca Normal and Spinanes. Their sound fits in the nook (or is it a crannie?) between Quasi and The Thermals. In other words, it RAWKS! And yes all those references were purposely Left and North.

Key Tracks:
Young Hearts Spark Fire
Crazy / Forever
I Quit Girls
and The "Binary Code" song, Heart Sweets "X O X O X"