sandwiches

This excellent double portrait of Mr. Foster sits above the reception desk of the Guaranty Life Insurance Building, which also houses a number of Baton Rouge's radio stations. I was there recording a segment of the Bite and Booze show on 107.3, airing this Saturday. Tune in! We talk about sandwiches!

Wednesday:
Destroy All Monsters, Bored
Godz, 2

R.I.P. Don Cornelius
R.I.P. Mike Kelley
R.I.P. Dorothea Tanning
(image right: Dorothea Tanning, To The Rescue, 1965, Oil on canvas. From the Hood Museum.)

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Thursday:
Elton John, Madmen Across the Water
Travis Matte & the Zydeco Kingpins, Booty Zydeco
Long John Baldry, Everything Stops for Tea
John Paul Keith, The Man Who Time Forgot
Dr. Feelgood, BBC in Concert (14th January 1975)
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Wolfroy Goes to Town
I Can Lick Any Sonfoabitch in the House, Live in Seattle

Louisiana Saturday Night is happening! It's available for pre-order from LSU Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble,  I've been assured Kindle/eBook formats will be available when the book hits stores in March. Events are being scheduled, talks organized, the keystone is being loosened for the publicity avalanche.

I set up a page on this blog to collect everything as well as one at LouisianaSaturdayNight.com. The full social media octopus for the book has yet to be summoned from its dark underwater lair.

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Edited to add: I once knew a kid everyone at school called "Sandwiches" because he brought extra sandwiches in his lunch. I can never look at the word "sandwiches" without thinking of that kid.

my opinion on Lana Del Rey is valuable

Lana Del Rey, "National Anthem"

Heartless Bastards, Arrow (streaming at NPR)
Lana Del Rey, Born to Die
Ornette Coleman, The Complete Science Fiction Sessions

I'm not sure what the big fuss is about. Lana Del Rey is just weird enough to work for me. Her voice has a hairbrush-microphone-sing-in-the-mirror quality I admire. The lyrics are occasionally goofy enough that it sounds like an actual person made them up. I like the Nelson Riddle via Casio-preset production. It's like cinematic romantic anthems for people who are marginally successful at having relationships, songs to be belted out in the microwave dinner minutes. I dunno; it's not thoroughly insipid. Is that what's wrong with it?

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We had four fire alarms in a row this afternoon , and each time we filed outside dutifully, complaining about the work we weren't getting done by the fourth iteration. Ours is an echoey old building decked out in tile and hardwood and marble, and the alarm is so loud in the stairwells, it is almost transcendent. Visceral. Like you will become fire if you don't leave. The fact that I like the fire alarm might determine whether my opinion on Lana Del Rey is valuable to you.

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On the note of enjoying fire alarms, happy birthday 75th birthday Philip Glass!


Here's a video of me watching Mr. Glass watch someone perform "Opening" from Glassworks at a master class here on campus  in 2010.

grocery store roses

We put a lava lamp in the music room to enhance the grooviness

Saturday:
Troll Hunter

Sunday:
The Rolling Stones, Aftermath
The Libertines, Up the Bracket
Edward P. Jones, The Known World


Monday:
The Monkees, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.
Louisiana Saturday Night Spotify playlist
Mount Analogue, Observations and Motion
Wye Oak, Civilian


I put together a Louisiana Saturday Night playlist of Cajun, zydeco, blues, New Orleans music and swamp pop as it appears in the book. There's a lot of stuff I want to include that isn't on Spotify, but it gets the idea across.

A giveaway for the book is to be staged through this very website, as soon as I get the details sorted.

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I had lunch at the stockyard and then watched a cattle auction, all as part of an assignment. Nothing will make your face itch more than an auctioneer babbling numbers in the $900 range. Look for the tale in the March issue of Country Roads and find out if I inadvertently bought a cow or not.



The camellias are at a full rage just out our back step. There is a wall of them separating us from the neighbors, really one of my favorite things about our house. They got in my dreams - I was in a room in my house where I saw a small blond leather version of a camellia on a long stem like grocery store roses. When I picked it up to look at it, another appeared in its place, and then every time I turned my head, there were more and more, stacked up in pules to the leather flower whorls pointed out, until they filled up the whole room.

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Used to be, if someone would ask me what kind of movies I like, I'd say I don't really like movies, but now I'll say the kind of movies I like is Troll Hunter.

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Maya is teaching me to play drums, part of a twofold plan involving  1) learning to play drums and 2) doing a parenting half-nelson to get her to practice, and she is actually really good at putting a musical idea across. Like she's patient, but not infinitely so, which is pretty much my approach to teaching. And everything.

The Known World

Thursday:
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
The Swell Season, Strict Joy
Vic Chesnutt, Silver Lake

Friday:
Steve Reich, Three Tales
Jim Staley, Mumbo Jumbo

Book publicity is aswing! The one definite thing is the book launch party at Teddy's Juke Joint on March 10th. You said you'd come! I'll remind you!

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I had a dream that Sukie, the very dog you see above, was the size of a horse and just standing at the foot of the bed in the dark staring at us.

I also had a dream that I was involved in the building of the Eiffel Tower, and there was some deal with the timesheet, where you had to list every hour that work was being done on the tower, not just the hours you worked. Basically the timesheet would say you worked 16-20 hours a day, six days a week, covering the different crews. The supervisor explained this was a violation of French labor laws but was how it had to work, and that when the labor law inspector inevitably comes around, tell him that I worked all those hours, and he'll tick it off on his little list and that would be the end of it.

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The Known World is so good. It's Cormac McCarthy spare, rambly, harrowing without the gauze of privilege lending the narrator a means to disbelieve that things are as bad as they are.   The people in the Known World are cautiously surprised the world isn't worse, or pragmatically try not to think about it.

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Somehow I'd yet to hear Steve Reich's Three Tales before, or this little wonder as well.


Steve Reich, "Reed Phase"

into the mists of history on a flaming raft

One's circle should contain all the best people.

The Bright Light Social Hour, The Bright Light Social Hour
Battles, Dross Glop 1 (here and here)
tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L 
We Are Augustines, Rise Ye Sunken Ships
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Black Francis, The Golem
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Pearls Before Swine, City of Gold

Here's this:

I wish Chuck Klosterman a long life but that Tuneyards piece is some of the laziest thinking published so far this century
— The Mountain Goats (@mountain_goats) January 25, 2012

What I'll say is: W H O K I L L made it onto my "best of 2011" list, and might have made it to the top if my list had a top, and Merrill Garbus would probably whip any or all three of us in a fight if it came down to it.

I almost bailed on posting a "best of 2011" list because 1) it is lazy, 2) is arbitrary, and 3) it was January 19, 2012 when I finally got around to it, nearly three weeks since the year was sent adrift into the mists of history on a flaming raft. But I'm listening to W H O K I L L now, and it still has the stuff. 

In response Mr. Klosterman's  aforementioned "Tuneyards piece" about the career arcs of indie darlings: Why people love anything is anyone's guess. I do what I can just to understand why I like something when I like it because I think there is something to glean from fingering that fragile cord of interest while it still stretches from point A to B. You have to pluck it right then before the string pops. How the thing sounds in the future when all the popped strings are restrung is the future's business.

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And anyway, blessed are the determined recommenders! Thanks to J. Edward Keyes for keeping mentioning We Are Augustines! Double thanks for Jamey Hatley for mentioning Edward P. Jones in conversation this morning; I've been trying to remember his name since she mentioned it a year or so back. This Washington Post article lays out what he's about, if your curious. I hope someone out there gives The Golem a spin because it is aces. One's circle should contain all the best people, so that their recommendations spiral up like a minaret.

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The Bright Light Social Hour, "Detroit"

Me: This song is pretty good, isn't it? Maya: Yeah, it's good. Not the best though.

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Speaking of recommendations, in this week's Record Crate for 225 Magazine: Fred Eaglesmith, Punch Brothers, Kidsleep records compilation, and Bryan Adams. Fred Eaglesmith is playing tonight in Baton Rouge at the Red Dragon. 

I like Bruce Springsteen

"All I'm Thinkin' About"


Pulp, His 'N' Hers
Roedelius/Campanni/Bigazzi, Friendly Game
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Devils & Dust
The Chameleons UK, Strange Times
Momus, Ocky Milk
Klaus Nomi, Za Bakdaz: The Unfinished Opera
Virgin Prunes, ...If I Die, I Die

Clarification: I like Bruce Springsteen and am glad he's playing JazzFest.

I made a quip on twitter/facebook

(insert indignant comment about New Orleans jazz/heritage music in response to the Springsteen JazzFest announcement)
— Alex V. Cook (@cookalexv) January 24, 2012

making light of the spate of "no Jazz at JazzFest" quips that come up whenever the big non-New Orleans-music headliners are announced. The oblique joke fell largely flat with acquaintances spilling out on all sides to tell me I was dead wrong to not appreciate any Bruce Springsteen appearance. I do; I intend to go see him even. Geaux Boss!

It's just that social media is such a curious, obsessive mirror. When we see something in its reflection that doesn't look like us, our tendency is to correct it or excise it or blot it out, whereas in real life, we let friends and strangers say stupid things all the time without comment. Something about it being on the screen, our screen, makes us react. I'm pretty sure this is how contemporary politics and class dynamics works as well.

Bruce Springsteen is a wide wellspring of (re)discovery for me. I came of age in the late 80's where da Boss suddenly was re-animated into an all-consumptive media entity, an agent sent from Adult Contemporary America to eclipse Prince. As insouciant teenagers should do, I shunned it, leaving his entire ever-expanding catalog for me to revisit now.

For instance, until today I hadn't listened to Devils & Dust, (and I have Spotify's ticker to thank for my doing so) which is a sepia thundercloud casting a shadow on peasants and the locusts eating their crops alike, occasionally parting to let in little rays of light like "All I'm Thinkin' About" shine through.

the Japanese magnolias are doing this

Magnolia liliiflora, a.k.a, Japanese Magnolia

Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (streaming at NPR)
Alex Chilton, Free Again: The "1970" Sessions
The Mountain Goats, The Life of the World to Come
Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
Dr. Dog, Shame Shame
Marah, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight
Camper van Beethoven, II and III
Mekons, United and Punk Rock

My friend Terry once said the most reliable sign of an untrustworthy person is an appreciation for Leonard Cohen.  I'd attempt a counter-argument but Terry is long gone and thereby wins all debates and besides, who can talk about records when the Japanese magnolias are doing this outside?