Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.

Varsity Theatre, Baton Rouge, LA 9/29/2008

Of the many times I've seen Drive-By Truckers, this was probably the heaviest performance in terms of expressing their lyrical and compositional gravity. Funny songs like "Steve McQueen" took a couple of "fuck cancer" dark detours, "Nine Bullets," played as a request for a friend that happened to be in town, was rather glorious, rolling in the nihilist haystack forked up from the withered crop of rock 'n' roll. Cooley's songs hit like arrows suddenly piercing the wall next to your head, esp "3 Dimes Down" which might be my favorite song of his. And theirs. And anybody's.

And honestly, I never all that liked the protracted intro to Shonna's "Homefield Advantage" until last night; instead of being the padding I wrongly considered it to be, it builds the game tension necessary to have that release when the song proper kicks in. I could easily hear a collaged murmur of a baseball announcer's "and there's the pitch" implied in the thundering intro.

The noteable cover was Tom Petty's "Rebels" - one foot in the grave, the other foot on the pedal, I was born a rebel - one of the great lines in rock; practically a thesis statement for the band, for The Southern Thing, for all that shit y'all. Drive-By Truckers, thanks for coming.

Don Chambers + GOAT

Drive-By Truckers & Don Chambers + GOAT, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.

Varsity Theatre, Baton Rouge, LA 9/29/2008

Best of the assorted wise-ass comments about the ladder/hubcap percussion array at stage right:

• Hey, can I get more stepladder in this monitor?
• This is my instrument. Why don't you go ask Patterson if you can stand his guitar to adjust those lights, huh?
• If they do an unplugged show, does he just pull out one of those short three-step fold-out numbers and a set of wind chimes?
• Great show, man. Listen... I lost a hubcap on the way over here so....

We kid because we love. Don Chambers + GOAT rocked it. He had poetry books and his own brand of coffee at the merch table. More chicken fried weirdness laced with sweet guitar jams like this in the world, please.

rolling soundtrack

With two trips down to New Orleans in three days, this was my rolling soundtrack, interrupted when the mighty WWOZ of New Orleans came in range.

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird: I am newly rekindled in love with this sappy wrist-cutter of a record after hearing Antony back up Lou Reed on the new Berlin: Live record. Antony may actually out dramatize The Queen is Dead-era Morrissey by trapping his sexual identity issues under a glass bell and holding your nose to it, forcing you to watch it squirm and writhe.
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha: for when you grow out of the weepy trials of the aforementioned record but the sting still lingers.
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun: The perfect album for all occassions. the impossible genius endgame toward which every drum circle has stretched and failed to reach. The sound of God's drum machine. The howling of the post-digital animal coming through ever wire.
TV on the Radio - Dear Science: I cannot get into these guys no matter how convincing the arguments for them are. I am tempted always to respond TV on The Radio? I don't even like TV on the TV with useless snark when they are evoked.
North Mississippi All-Stars - Electric Blue Watermelon Chopped and Screwed EP: Hahahahaha! I was looking for a perfect chopped and screwed album for the trip down to the city and instead found this. I bow down to NMAS live but their recordings never do it for me EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE. They operate under the limiting techniques of Houston cough syrup rap production and somehow the true amphibian soul of this band leaps out.
John Fahey - God, Time, and Causality: Just because.

5 Things about The Oxford American Party at Tipitina's Last Night

1. Beforehand, a succulent patio dinner of duck and mussels (seperately, but communing under the auspices of a holisticly badass meal) at Martinique Bistro.
2. Soul Rebels Brass Band tearing it up with their subtly jazzier variant on the brass band juggernaut form, followed by the unstoppable Charles Walker and the Dynamites as close to 1965 Apollo Theatre cold sweat soul supernova as you are likely to find. Tip's had closed the free drinks and eats by the time I got there all was well and groovy in the halls of funk.
   
3. The real action was on the sidewalk where I got to talk to the editors and writers and festival organizers and assistants and this and that, including getting to meet Dr. Ben "Go f- yourself, Mr. Cheney" Kimble, only to intensify at the after-party at the nearby gorgeous home of
   
4. David Ramsey, who had my favorite piece in this issue about his students' struggle to learn in the plagued New Orleans school system and their infatuation with Lil Wayne, and who earns a spot on the tight list just for having the above ur-Warholian Johnny Cash Hatch print up on his wall, as well as the wedding-cake-frosting succulent paintings by his wife Grace and
5. Driving the OA folks back to their hotel, getting to talk music nrrd with Marc and once again make a case for a certain band that has yet appear in a Music Issue, and getting to talk to Carol Ann and Warwick and Ray and Bre and others that keep the wheels of the finest of magazines going. A perfect close to a good-to-be-me night
   

Album Covers Reproduced Freehand in MsPaint

once again, thanks to the all-seeing all-knowing Philip

and while I'm being all linky

Here is young Nick Cave being a total badass - keep watching to the end


Thanks to Philip for putting me on this.

Get Your George Maciunas On

with this beautiful time suck of a web app brazenly titled Type is Art (Thanks, Lee).

or just google image search the Fluxus type master himself and witness
cleverness raised to the next level



or then let Sonic Youth drive you mad
as they perform Maciunas' Piano Piece #13 for Nam June Paik
(Note that Lee Renaldo is the SY member you want to
help you frame up a new shed and not the others)