Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Listening to a little Pink Floyd



Wednesday:
The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, Egor!
Zombi, Escape Velocity and Spirit Animal
Gianni Rossi, Star Vehicle OST
Franz Frackerhaus, Stories from my Cold War
Pink Floyd, "Lucifer Sam" and "Astronomy Dominie"


Listening to a little Pink Floyd at the end of the day feels exactly like listening to a lot of Pink Floyd all day. It is just more efficient.

Ode to King Cake

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Above: 1) The new Oxford American Best of the South issue. Subscribers and public libraries have it already, as might your better booksellers. Or get it here. In it, you will find 2)  an "Ode to King Cake" by yours truly,  about my favorite thing in the world, the king cakes at Calandro's. I particularly like their 3) Mississippi Mud king cake: "They should put the Marquis de Sade in this one instead of baby Jesus." Enjoy!

burning star cores

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Tuesday:
The Young, Dub Egg
The Weight, Are Men
The Byrds, Sweethearts of the Rodeo
Bob Dylan, Planet Waves
Jesse Fuller, Jazz, Folk Songs, Spirituals & Blues
Michael Gira, The Milk of M. Gira: Collected Solo Home Recordings
Skullflower, Transformer
Yellow Swans, Going Places
Burning Star Core, Challenger
SUNN 0))) meets Nurse With Wound, The Iron Soul of Nothing

I heard the Weight playing on the sound system at Radio Bar yesterday, the only person in there with the bartender singing along. The Radio Bar is set up that you can pick what to play using the Apple Remote on your phone and can vote a song up. It wash't all that lonely; there were folks on the patio and I was waiting on a friend but still, that is an ideal music-listening situation, being the only person in a bar. There should be a EQ setting on iPods for "Only Person in Bar."

Every song on "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" is perfect. I wanted to hear a drunken shout version of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" on the bike ride over to the bar. Instead I got a Bob Dylan song I can't remember now. I don't know how I missed on knowing there is a SUNN 0)))/Nurse With Wound collaboration album, for they are my two favorite hermetic projects. But yeah, all that. I had more and then I saw these crepe myrtles behind the assembly center and they are louder and bigger sweethearts and have a hotter burning star cores than anything.

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Monday, May 28, 2012

supernova of pastrami

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The Rachel is a supernova of pastrami. Concentric circles implying the ever-expanding cosmos (waistband) and ripples of plasma that give birth to universes (burps).

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The Reuben at Stein's Market & Deli, from structural and culinary standpoints, doesn't suck either. A friend in the know suggests the Kelly, so I'll have to venture that one next time.

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Stein's is one of those New Orleans places that is not-New Orleans in nature - somewhere in this Mimmo Rotella masterpiece of a message wall is a sign that chuckles, "Wanna po-boy? Go somewhere else!" - but absorbed into the patois, bent around the curves of the city.

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Take this exterior shot: I've been trying to be more conscious of my photo editing lately since I'm going to be teaching it in the fall and it is virtually impossible to get things lined up.

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The whole experience is warped space-time, how you have to bend around the crowded aisles and are pretty much forced to brush against every single person in the place. How there isn;t enough seats at the two little tables and you are wondering how you are not going to get Russian dressing all over the car and then in a quiet whoosh, that one yahoo stretched out reading the paper moves on and you can sit in communal victory. And then they call your name and you brush against each one of these people back to the vanishing point where the sandwiches come out.

I"m getting busy on Gas Station Boudin, my next book about hole-in-the-wall South Louisiana restaurants. Holla atcha boy if you know a place I need to know about.

Friday, May 25, 2012

eleven things I like about that kid

maya encaustic

Friday:
Joe Bonamassa, Driving Towards the Daylight
Free, Heartbreaker
Chris Spedding, Enemy Within
Roger Alan Wade, Deguello Motel
Bruce Springsteen, Tunnel of Love
Jerry Reed, Alabama Wild Man
Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

In honor of Maya's 11th birthday, here are eleven things I like about that kid making a hair-dryer encaustic out of childish things:
  1. She'd pretty much always rather go outside
  2. She goes deep on anything that interests her
  3. She has to squint to focus on the things that don't
  4. She's still willing to go places with me on the outside chance that something interesting will happen
  5. She rolls with it when nothing interesting happens
  6. She can already do some things better than I can
  7. She's totally funny
  8. She's totally serious
  9. She's not in a big hurry to grow up
  10. She's not clinging to being a kid either
  11. She's more into being her right now than anyone is about anything

combo platter

tommy's fish house seafood platter

Seafood combo platter at Tommy's Fish House (be warned: Cajun midi) in Prairieville. That cole slaw is as good as it looks and the oysters are better. I'm working on my Photoshop/improving skills so any advice is welcome. These are all iPhone photos after they've been light-balanced and color adjusted away from blurry iGreenness, so take pity.

Thursday cont'd:
Happy Mondays, Bummed
Joey Ramone, ...Ya Know?
Pixies, Caribou

Tommy's fish house gumbo

Even their gumbo is good. Despite what people might lead you to believe about Louisiana dining, not all gumbos are created equal, in fact most of the time, they feel like perfunctory additions to the menu, a thing out-of-towners feel compelled to order feeding a listless compulsion to make it.  Tommy's could've stood more seafood (though not too much; I don't care for picking things like crab claws or shells out of soup) but the broth was spot on and the okra retaining their crunch. It felt like a conscious dish rather than an obligation.

tommy's fish house roast beef poboy

Jerri's roast beef poboy with debris was on the money, even after hauling it back from beyond the parish line. Maya said, "You have to put this place in your book. I insist." If you insist.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

A moment of nostalgia about the Stone Roses


The Stone Roses, "(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister"


Thursday:
The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses 

This bit in the Guardian takes me right to the halcyon days of 1989, trying to get a bunch of normals in a van on some college trip to latch onto my Stone Roses tape, the most normal tape I had in my bag. Jangle was on the wane, ready to be usurped by dance music and grunge, things normal people could readily appreciate. The Stone Roses holds up reasonably well.  I remember one blond girl in the van giving a conciliatory head bob to"(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister', perhaps seeing herself in the candy floss girl therein. I remember thinking, just hang in there for "Made of Stone" - it's the heavy, wicked song:

Your pink fat lips let go a scream
You fry and melt and I love the scene.

In retrospect, a car crash song wouldn't have soundtracked the magic moment in a crowded van careening down I-10. I was in that phase of young adulthood where you read Crash and wreckage seems romantic, a sensuous abstraction.  "That shit" got switched off by the voting majority and the sugar spun sister dutifully bobbed to the radio, like a normal person. I don't even remember the occasion or designation of the trip. Just that momentary pity nod. That is all the adoration a boy really needs.


The Stone Roses, "I Wanna Be Adored"

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

flowers and T. Rex lyrics

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You got the teeth of the hydra upon you!

Tuesday:
T. Rex, Electric Warrior
Tony Williams Lifetime, Believe It
The Philadelphia Experiment, The Philadelphia Experiment
Ornette Coleman, Of Human Feelings (via YouTube)


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You're windy and wild, oh yeah!

Wednesday:
Guided By Voices, Class Clown Spots a UFO
The Strokes, Is This It?
Peter Case, Wig!
Steve Forbert, Alive on Arrival
Graham Parker, Squeezing Out Sparks
Garland Jeffreys, The King of In Between
T. Rex, Electric Warrior
The Pretenders, The Singles

The Boomtown Rats, The Fine Art of Surfacing
Sonny Landreth, Elemental Journey


So much going on that all I can muster is flowers and T. Rex lyrics, but then what else do you need? "Man, [like] I need a TV when I've got T. Rex," or so say the ancients. I sang "Bang a Gong" in guitar class last week and am hoping to perfect it this evening.

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You got a hubcap diamond-star halo!

I keep accidentally singing "you got a dubstep diamond star halo" which is amusing to noöne. Not even me. When in doubt, just say how dirty and sweet everything is.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Authors are so riveting and clever!


Authors are so riveting and clever! Hang on their every word! Bring them beer and plates of food and laugh at their wry comments! It's all they want! This action potluck shot is from the NUNU's Facebook page. Thank you so much George and Jill and everybody involved with the arts programs out in sweet old Arnaudville.

Sunday:
TV (Road House, Mad Men, The Pitch, the Killing, Game of Thrones)
W. G. Seabald, Austerlitz
Blut Aus Nord, 777: The Desanctification (or at least I talked the poet Gorjus of Jackson into buying it)

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Look at this place!

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Monday:
Spritiualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light and Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space
The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Aufheben
Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro
Joe Henry, Scar
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
Herbie Mann, Memphis Underground
Jimmy Smith, Organ Grinder Swing

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Really, NUNU's is a treasure and I'm humbled that they asked me to be part of their scene out there.
Here's a story I did about them a couple months back in Country Roads.

People bought a bunch of books. The Press told me that we are coming up on a thousand copies sold already. Come be my 1,001! It's now available on Kindle and Nook too. I'll sign your phone or whatever if you want me to. I'm not precious about the artifact!

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Otherwise, It's been equal parts magnolia, encaustic, mild pneumonia and Austerlitz. And Dave and Brannon and Katie and Gina and Josie and I deconstructed Road House and then Dave and I went to look at metal records.  I read something about Filles of Kilimanjaro this weekend except now I can't find it. It might have just been the Wikipedia page. I'm pretty sure I saw Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground in the stacks at the metal record store. If not, I'm unsure what is calling me to it. I think I'm exhausting all the revelation gleanable from this. I have a conference call. Happy Monday!

Friday, May 18, 2012

Tonight in Arnaudville!


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Check out the street view of NUNU's in Arnaudville where I'm doing a book signing tonight. I understand it has been spruced up a little since this photo was taken, but part of me wants it to look just like this. I love the people at Nunu's. They embody the south Louisiana cultural spirit maybe better than anyone.

Here's how you get there.

Tonight at 7: It's a potluck, a photo exhibit by my buddy Sam Irwin, a talk on the arts by Christine Weeks, and a concert by Artists as One Voice. I'm brining a Calandro's strawberry cream cheese-filled creme cake if that helps make your decision. There will be cream and creme! You can be the girl with the most cake!


Here is a slide show of Sam's Art in Agriculture project.

Friday:
Beach House, Bloom
Cat Power, What Would the Community Think?
Hole, Live Through This
Frank Black and the Catholics, Pistolero
Giant Sand, Goods and Services
Father John Misty, Fear Fun



I was trying to find that particular Cat Power song with the bit about the girl with the most cake, and then I remembered it was a Hole song. Courtney Love is a contentious love. I do still kinda love her old trainwreck ways, and yeah, I know Billy Corgan and Kurt Cobain and whoever actually wrote this whole Hole album or whatever. It hol(e)ds up much better than you'd think. Better than any of the people that made it have.

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Just try to defy the allure of this cake.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

the summer of Donna Summer




Wednesday:

1980 was the summer of Donna Summer. Donna Summer's slow burn grooves were the gears toothed precisely to the 70's/80's cusp. "Bad Girls" would come on the bus radio and ol' Clifford that drove our route would crank it, go a little fast down this one back Houma road that would send us all bouncing out of our seats.

I also have a vivid memory of one particular babysitter who liked to practice her disco moves on my mom's little rickety stereo going a little too deep on "Love to Love You Baby", losing herself in it three minutes in, a brunette strand hanging over one eye and the other rolled to the ceiling, imagining a disco ball or cocaine or a groovy main man with medallions, anything besides our apartment's chat carpet and two weird kids to watch and her own baby asleep in a carseat in the other room.

One day this babysitter got a mid-sitting better offer and took off, calling her drug dealer friend to come take over. I don't remember if the baby got left with my sister and me in the weird half-hour interim until the drug dealer arrived. The friend showed up about twenty minutes later looking like a Cajun member of the Runaways. She had a homemade tattoo on her arm that said "REFER" burned on with an eraser and cigarette lighter.  "That's my boyfriend's name, 'Reefer'. Or at least what everyone calls him."  Even at 11, I knew reefer wasn't spelled REFER, but didn't know how to broach the subject.

My mom got home from work pissed. No one considered notifying her of this shift change. The original babysitter was already on thin ice - my mom suspected her of stealing and didn't like that she brought her own baby with her. Abandoning her post was beyond the pale, though we did stay with ol' REFER for a bit until someone else could be arranged, and one day REFER dropped us off at her mom's hair salon to hangout for the day which was AWESOME. We got free unauthorized haircuts of our choosing and ate all the candy Grandma REFER had out for customers. I remember reading a big kids picture book of American folklore she had lying around the magazines that contained the story of a Pilgrim family being tortured by poltergeists, and Grandma REFER gave it to me.

My mom secured less fluid babysitting arrangements for the rest of the summer so we never got to go back. But I remember one day pulling open the lid to the record player to find that one babysitter's copy of "Love to Love You Baby" still on the spindle, and feeling that we'd won.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

my life as a sculpture exhibition

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I found this on the sidewalk the other day. It looks like the handle one uses to pry up the metal burner lids on an iron stove, but who had an iron stove out behind the library? 1850's tailgating re-enactors?

Wednesday:
The Mavericks, 20th Century Masters and Super Colossal Smash Hits
Dave Edmunds, Get It
Lee Bain III & the Glory Fires, There is a Bomb in Gliead
Small Faces, From the Beginning
Roxy Music, Essential

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This post is my life as a sculpture exhibition. This number seemingly emerged out of the ground at my life's auxiliary exhibition space behind the CVS.

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Meanwhile, back at the gallery, I love this thing because 1) this photo makes it look like a giant Ellsworth Kelly sculpture on a massive warehouse gallery floor instead of just a mouse replacement on my beat up desk and 2) it makes you feel like a gestural genius moving about the screen, a classical guitarist except with browser windows.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Wow and also wow



Monday:
Johannes Moser, West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Britten: Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68
Polish Radio Symphony, 20th Century Classics: Penderecki (I came for The Dream of Jacob and Emanations for Two String Orchestras but stayed for Partia for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra)
Mount Eerie, Clear Moon ( via NPR Music)
Xiu Xiu, Always

Tuesday:
Chappo, Moonwater
Harlem Shakes, Technicolor Health
The Dø, A Mouthful


Seriously, if you are at all inclined toward the ecstatic and exploratory, Penderecki's Partia for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra is worth a listen. like noise rock scored for The Grand European Tradition, played with the determination of army ants trying to dismantle a helicopter and drag it down to their lair. Or something. Wow.



Also wow:
Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground through the slime of creation. Astounding the first telephone call, the first boiling water, the first song, the first loincloth.
The opening passage of Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes, who passed away today. My buddy Terry passed away two years and two days ago and I don't say this to get all up in a death, but he's been on my mind. When I was all astir about Roberto Bolaño like everybody was, Terry read The Savage Detectives and went, "Eh. But have you read Terra Nostra? Now that's a great Mexican novel." and he was right.

And then when I heard that the Kodak plant in downtown Rochester was discovered to have had a nuclear reactor in its basement, I wanted nothing more than the old coot to be perched up at the coffee shop so I could tell him about it, if only so he'd tell me about something better. I'd play super obtuse music like the Penderecki thing above for Terry on my phone as we sat outside and swatted mosquitos and talked about Mexican novels and weapons-grade uranium and so on. Anyway, wow some more, and to the living business of busy living in our world.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Young Conceptual Artists of America

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Meeting of the Young Conceptual Artists of America can now commence.

Saturday:
Love, Forever Changes
Slim Harpo, The Excello Singles
Lee Fields & the Expressions, My World (instrumentals)

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There is something very Fluxus about doing a Google image search for "plain white background"...

Sunday:
Glenn Gould, The 1955 Goldberg Variations (the one where you can hear him singing along, though I always forget to listen for it)
Peter Garland, Waves Breaking on Rocks
Elodie Lauten, Blue Rhythms


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...and then sorting through a bunch of them until you find the one that works.

Friday, May 11, 2012

under the ocean... over the mountains

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The roof situation: From the inside, it looks like under the ocean

Friday:
Miike Snow, Happy to You
Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What
Bert Jansch, Birthday Blues
Greg Brown, Milk of the Moon
Richard Buckner, Our Blood

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From the outside, it looks like over the mountains

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From the curbside, it looks like the people at Arbor Vitae did a nice job on that limb. I came home and it was stacked up just like this.

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From the camellia's point of view, it's tired of holding things together.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

The horrible/not-horrible line

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Three dragonflies having fun on the line.

Thursday:
The Mavericks, What a Crying Shame
David Linley, El-Rayo-X
C. C. Adcock, C. C. Adcock
Vallejo, Rock Americano
R. L. Burnside & the Sound Machine, Bad Luck City
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Year One
Larry Garner, Double Dues (20th Anniversary Reissue)

It was just me at guitar class last night so Dave had me sing. I waded through a decent reading of "Sweet Jane" and a sub-garage approximation of "Strychnine" but as we played around with E♭open tuning, I stumbled on a version of the chorus lick from the Mavericks' "What a Crying Shame" which is another of those greatest songs ever. I attempted a falsetto and it wasn't horrible. OK, maybe it actually was horrible, but it didn't feel horrible.

The horrible/not-horrible line is being similarly walked with my slide playing. So fun up there on the line. Look at the level of not-horrible-ness radiating from me. I'm like Aquaman or something!



This is a great cover of a Springsteen tune by the Mavericks. Nothing horrible here. Everything is perfect in this video -  from Tammy Wynette's hair down to the knick-knacks on the bookshelf. I want to sip pricey bourbon with Tammy Wynette while she watches her stories in that living room.

I had more, like a Facebook chat with one of my comic book scholar friends about Pulp, the Smiths, houseflies and Yoko Ono, but I'm saving it up for a collected volume to be titled Talking With Dudes About Music in the Night (and in the Day). It will be salient, as they say. Possibly ebullient. Meanwhile, here is Yoko Ono being fly.


This sounds genius accompanying any music. Try it!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

you all go get married to each other



Wednesday:
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River
Beachwood Sparks, Make the Cowboy Robot Cry
Cotton Jones, Paranoid Cocoon
Patterson Hood live on the Mountain Stage (via NPR)
The Widowers, All But Gone (via their Bandcamp site)
Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers (via YouTube)
The Vulgar Boatmen, You and Your Sister
The Magnetic Fields, "Strange Powers"

I needed to hear "Lodi" then I needed to hear the whole record then I needed to start a country rock band then I needed to just listen to Creedence and let them take up that yoke and then I needed to get back to work and come up with something else to listen to. This McSweeney's article about "bandwiches" offers this analogy:

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Alligator sausage, ketchup, relish, seeded hot dog bun.

and all I'm saying is I know of two places in town where you can get that, and like CCR, it's good, I'm down with it, finding it occasionally, possibly momentarily perfect even, but rarely the best long-run option for what you're after. Finding what works for you is important.


Beachwood Sparks, "Ponce de Leon Blues" does the trick for me.


"Like a brown bird nested in a Texaco sign, I got a point of view"- Silver Jews, "I'm Getting Back into Getting Back Into You"

I'm glad President Obama made what I think is a very logical and decent stance on same-sex marriage, political chess move that it may be. It is crazy that he should have to. I support same-sex marriage just as much as I support different-sex marriage. See how goofy that sounds? I even support couples not being married. Or triples. Or people not being in relationships. Or whatever. I feel stupid trying to articulate this. Marriages other than your own are like science; it doesn't matter how you feel about them. They are there outside of your acceptance.


The Vulgar Boatmen, "You and Your Sister"

Are sister wives married to each other or are they just spokes off the wheel of a man? Either way, I'm down with you being down with that too. Or not. I'm down with a lot. But it still doesn't matter. One of my former grad students was surprised to discover that marriages in the US are not arranged; it didn't occur to him that they weren't.

My wife has super powers. That's all I know about marriage. Powers stronger than that of Creedence Clearwater Revival and totally hot, same/different-sex, n-partnered unions and alligator sausage and political arguments and the head rush from eating cotton candy with a gloomy angel on a Coney Island Ferris wheel (see below). Combined. Even more super than strange powers, which is still the best song ever. When we kiss it's like a flying saucer landing. I'm gonna go listen to it five or six times in a row while you all go get married to each other.


The Magnetic Fields, "Strange Powers"

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

teleological or ontological

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Tuesday:
W.G. Sebold, Austerlitz
Silversun Pickups, Neck of the Woods
  • Good ol' Silversun Pickups. Of all the bands whose new album always strikes me as a winner, inspiring thoughts like, "I should listen to this band more!" and then never do until the next new album comes out, they are my favorite.

    Give it a listen through this Spotify widget!
  • A limb from the water oak out front came down last night and put a hole in my roof.  You could see the stars from inside at the attic access pulldown stairway and it was kinda pretty. The kind of image that might make for a Silversun Pickups EP cover. I forgot to take a picture of it so I couldn't make "fixing a hole where the rain gets in" jokes on Facebook. Instead, we had a nice meeting with our homeowner's insurance guy, a guy nice enough to almost make me not completely suspicious of the whole insurance industry, and then I spent the morning throwing limbs off the roof.
  • The whiteboard paint wall in my new office is on point. Last time I was so enamored with an office accouterment is when we all finally got email. I just crossed something off on the "To do" sector of the wall with inordinate pleasure.
  • Yesterday, after walking back from getting some delicious ghetto falafel with friends from Atcha, I asked whether something said was a teleological or ontological justification for something. It was ontological. It was like living in a funnier, slightly less pensive, significantly more smartass version of Austerlitz, where old Sebald has an ongoing conversation with a dude who can tell his teleo from his onto. The subject was Superman. Didn't Superman get here on a spaceship? Is traffic ontological? My company was with comic book scholars, of all things, but everything stands for either God or yourself or both, no matter what you are talking about.
  • Unless you are talking about tea; Atcha has the curious, final word on that (see above).


Monday, May 7, 2012

the shakes and the shimmies and the boogaloo

Monday:
Bombino of Niger, Agadez
Dub Colossus, A Town Called Addis
James Blood Ulmer, In and Out 
Skeeter Davis & NRBQ, She Sings They Play (HT to famous people on the Internet whose twitter streams are like eavesdropping on the best conversations)
Kim Fowley, International Heroes
The Human Beinz, Nobody But Me

I love "Nobody But Me."



It's the perfect teen anthem, the all-consuming ego of adolescence. That opening drone is the black hole from which nothing can escape but self-definition, the effects of me. Nobody gives you the shakes like I do. The real beauty, though, lies in the fragile pronouncements, the brittle threat of the shakes and the shimmies and the boogaloo. The Human Beinz sounds unsure while making those threats, like they find themselves suddenly in over their head. The confidence is instead channelled into there being nobody but me, nobody, nobody, nobody. The form shaped in the negative, the anti-silhouette becoming too bright to be defined. Adolescence. I just love this song.

Friday, May 4, 2012

RIP MCA


Friday:

RIP MCA. It is a little shocking how well Check Your Head holds up after twenty years. I agree that Paul's Boutique is the groundbreaking masterpiece, but CYH was the one that nailed it for me. It was where they transcended the novelty of being a white hip-hop band and in many ways were the channel that allowed the whole of hip-hop to transcend the cultural marginalizations foisted upon it: it's kids' music; it's black music; they don't play instruments, etc.

All those "accusations" stand on parts on Check Your Head, other parts they don't, and by knocking out the supports on both sides of their barrier, the wall crumbled.

I remember woozily weaving across LSU bar the Bayou somewhere in 1992, a new drinker barely standing as "Stand Together", equally green with its locust swarm fuzz blaring on the PA. Nothing special about this moment -  I'm sure many a drunken moment has been soundtracked by the Beastie Boys in the the ensuing decades -  but the floor buzzed with the song, the room slid, my head throbbed. It felt like being a satellite that just caught orbit.

My other favorite Beastie Boys memory is not my own. A friend told me once that at a restaurant he worked at, this one waitress would take a roll of quarters and fill the jukebox with Licensed to Ill for her whole shift, which I think is beautiful. Fight for your rights.

JazzFest on Saturday

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I will be out at JazzFest on Saturday with all these people and then some trying to figure out what I'm going to eat before my book signing at 2pm in the book tent.  If you are stuck for choices, go for the cochon da lait po-boy, but if you wanna branch out a little, the greens plate form Bennachin is amazing

I'm going to be interviewed on the mighty WWOZ at 12:15 and then will be writing funny things in your books at the book tent from 2-3.

If you are looking for me, I'll be the white guy in the straw cowboy hat sporting a purple KLSU t-shirt emblazoned with a mustache that matching my own. I'll understand if that sounds like a poor sartorial choice, but offer that it's not so egregious by JazzFest standards.

I intend on seeing Guitar Slim, Jr, Steve Earle, Irma Thomas, a bit of My Morning Jacket, a bit of Lost Bayou Ramblers, and maybe even a bit of the Eagles (what the hell) but especially The Johnson Extension at the Gospel tent. They have got to be good to quell any and all adolescent comments about their name.




Thursday, May 3, 2012

young people on the verge

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She looks a little like the Picasso painting, but there is also an Angus Young, school uniform aspect to this scene that I appreciate.

Wednesday:
Hanni El Khatib, Will the Guns Come Out
Elephant of the Ocean, "Torso Looking For Legs"
Pagans, The Blue Album
Various Artists, Cheese Booger's Pie & Ears Vol. 2 - Cleveland: Old Scars, New Blood 


Ohio punk rules.


Thursday:
The Rolling Stones, "Brown Sugar", in my head, on repeat.
KLSU outside the conference room in which I am temporarily camped while they work on my office. Some student was just singing the National's "Bloodbuzz, Ohio" in the tiled hallway reverb.
Japancakes, Giving Machines (Happy birthday, John Neff!)
Thee American Revolution, Buddha Electrostorm
Oneida, Collisions 02
Flying Saucer Attack, Distance
The Rolling Stones, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out

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A group of conceptual artists and minimal abstractionists have been hired to repaint my office.

Last night at guitar class we played around with open G tuning and "Brown Sugar" in particular and yeah, yeah, Yeah, WOOOOO! Guitar class is fun. Is this what dudes who play golf feel, getting out on a big boy golf course and pretending for a moment they are Tiger Woods? This has got to be better. I'd rather pretend to be be Ron Wood than Tiger Woods anyway.

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It was all a blur.

Yes, I know Ron Wood wasn't in the Stones in 1969, I was just trying to do a thing with words. I went to an English department award ceremony where Emily Nemens won an award for a nonfiction essay contest I judged. It was a smart essay about art in New York, particularly the blocky minimalists and the blocks on which they and she lived. Then I darted over for a Student Media year end ceremony. They had pizza and cheery anxious young people on the verge of real life. Did I mention I like working on the student end of the university?

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I didn't know that "Brown Sugar" got its debut at the infamous Altamont show, right after Meredith Hunter was killed in self-defense by a Hell's Angel. You think a song like that has been around forever. You think everything will be, and then it's all something different.


Meredith Hunter in green. From Documenting Reality.  This is not where I meant this post to go, but there it went and here we are. Good luck out there.