stoking the mythology engine

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (lala)
The Who - Live at Leeds (lala)
The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan (lala)

Watching the Saints win the Super Bowl was as explosive as the camellias' vivid display to the blue blue sky. My neighborhood did not go batshit like they did for the NFC championship, but I suspect the ones with the real party artillery were down in the city contributing to this kind of mayhem.



This glimmer of spring makes me wanna get my swagger on, and the last non-soundtrack Nick Cave is a great record with which to do that. It is everything that I couldn't quite get off the Patti Smith record the other day: convulsive, turbulent, cocksure, lacing the glorious ego of rock with a strychnine trace of self-deprecation.

We Call Upon The Author - Nick...

Somebody came by my office to talk about the Super Bowl and mentioned that they never really listened to the Who before, and instead of following my instinct to summon the ninjas and have his throat cut, I put on Live at Leeds and let him bask in their ragged glory. The intro/explanation to "A Quick One" is too long an unnecessarily detailed but the train is unstoppable when it gets rolling. Who knows if it made him convert; you can hardly tell anyone anything anymore.

A Quick One, While He's Away (...

We got talking on the subject of ego and rock star dickishness and I stand firm that pop culture will slide into the ocean if we desire all our rock stars be decent, folksy people. I'm surrounded by decent folksy people all day; I want to consort with Vikings, demons, mankind-destroying scientists and drunken philosophers in my headphone time. Not always, but sorta always. Like, I bet Jack White is a petulant ass to be around, and probably some yahoo will emerge to profess his dude-bro-chillness and both opinions should be scrapped and tossed into the coal box that stoking the mythology engine behind something simple and ferocious like this.

Blue Orchid - The White Stripe...

The Damned are happily indifferent

Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets (lala)
Patti Smith - "Ask the Angels"
The Clash - Combat Rock (lala)
The Damned - Damned, Damned, Damned (lala)

The above were taken in the stairwell of the parking garage by the farmer's market yesterday, one from up looking down, the other looking back up to the sky.

I had a disco-not-disco mood creep up on me while Patti Smith and I did the dishes. Perfect a song as I think "Ask the Angels" is, she has nary a disco bone in that skinny body of hers, whereas the Clash have to work to not let the music take control. The Damned are happily indifferent.

Baby's On Fire - Brian Eno

Ask the Angels - Patti Smith G...

Overpowered By Funk - The Clas...

Fan Club - The Damned

Downtown Baton Rouge was looking enigmatic from up high; I suppose we don't get elevated so much around here.



This has been a weekend of glorious breakfasts: yesterday the Devonshire Tea Service at Strand's (I was previously unaware scones were worth eating, much less understanding that they are the best thing in the world when properly prepared and served with lemon curd and clotted cream) and this morning, waffles with Linn's Olallieberry Topping at home. Mine is a life of humbling privilege.



Appetite whetted for Superbowl party food down the street, non-NFL-sanctioned merch donned,hoping the Who and the Saints get cro-mag scrappy on this football spectacle bs - the day is rife with possibilty!

Speaking of spectacle and scrappy, my favorite thing from the Krewe of Orion parade last night, the Unique Dancers. We got a little excited about their appearance.

Another idea worth exploring

The Incredible String Band - The Big Huge (lala)
Blind Willie Johnson - "John the Revelator"

My morning coffee looms large and foreboding, but like everything, from the written word to the Mountain of God, it will eventually be surmounted by those compelled to make the first step, and the wisdom gained will be disseminated in the inevitable post-trip slideshow.

The Mountain Of God - The Incr...

Should any of you want to buy or send me this new book out on Harry Smith, will gladly read it, thank you profusely, and hopefully dissect it as deftly Alexander Provan did in this Bookforum review. I have prattled on about Mr. Smith before; his Anthology of American Folk Music, his films, his presence and prescience all are profound inspirations.

This song, which can found in Smith's Anthology, was likely an inspiration for that John the Revelator book I just read.



There is an illuminating interview with the author Peter Murphy by my outsideleft colleague Joe Ambrose, further exploring that idea.

So yeah, exploring. I just explored this soul food lunch from Zeeland St. Market*. Worth the trip every time.



* Why do restaurants tend to have jacked-up low-rent websites? Another idea worth exploring.

my name is wild

Guided By Voices - Propeller, Vampire on Titus, The Pipe Dream of Prince Whippet, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, and Under the Bushes Under the Stars (lala where available)
Thin Lizzy - Vagabonds of the Western World (lala)

All this exercise taught me is something I already knew: UTBUTS is just the best record. Robert Pollard's meta title word debris becomes polemic: Your Name is Wild, Man Called Aerodynamics, The Official Ironmen Rally Song, It's Like Soul Man. The stadium is tight around him as he rages away in his drunken room, a protective bubble, a lubricant to allow the star-shaped peg of his animus navigate the holes of squares.

"Liar's Tale" from Self-Inflicted... is the one lucid moment in here that really drew me in. There is nothing there, just a trembling, barely touched guitar, a song about a story that doesn't really get told. It sounds like a jambox in the parking lot playing a Thin Lizzy song.

A friend recently accused the world of not listening to enough Thin Lizzy. I stand by that accusation, and am doing my part. Robert Pollard would rather we listen to Phil Lynott than him on this Guided By Voices Day. Whose voice do you think is doing the guiding?

The Rocker (Album Version) - T...

Speaking of, I set up all kinds of push message settings to my phone, and now the goofy thing just buzzes all the time, leaving me to wonder Is it a message? My move in Scrabble? Some dumbass status update comment? At dull moments it is like a tiny Christmas morning, but otherwise it is a sweetly ineffective irony machine commenting on the state of communication saying little more than "Hey". I should install a John Cage 4' 33" ringtone and assign it to those alerts just to further drive the point home/off.

Speaking of that, and being in command of yr bon mots, The Posthuman Dada Guide, is an endless parade of great coffee shop pronouncements. You almost get white-out from the torrents of cleverness, which might be the greater purposeless purpose of Dada (loudly declaring nothing) vs the omnimedia of the common status-heap (demurely saying everything).

I got my mildly controversial, lococouture, semi-bootleg Saints merch today. I'm ready for whatever taxonomist ridiculousness you have. Go Team!

Sheetkickers - Guided By Voice...

Happy Guided By Voices Day!

C'mon! Everybody's doing it! I don't know why everybody's doing it, but they are! Be a scientist, a tree, a rock star! The voices give you the go ahead! You and me are in a band as of right now! Karate kick! Indecipherable lyric! Hook! Go!

old paper, Super Chicken, cornbread

Doug Kershaw - Spanish Moss (lala)
File' - Cajun Dance Band (lala)
Beau Jocque & the Zydeco Hi-Rollers - Give Him Cornbread... Live! (lala)

Behold all this ancient paper scored from the office vulture pile in the hall. The box on the left is loose blank stenographer sheets. I want to peck out my own version of Naked Lunch on them using a manual typewriter. On the right are bank-heist-money-packs of blank note cards, so old that the wrappers are splitting. There are being put to good use by the house cartoonist; this morning Super Chicken and Fantastic Fish united against "Ze French." Her Superman bevelling is peerless, but what father wouldn't say that?



Another example of old paper needing beholding is my friend Jacqueline Dee Parker's show currently up at Baton Rouge Gallery. I like the way the lines stretched across the pieces look like they are holding them to the wall, catching them in a spider web, tying them up like Joan of Arc.

From the Baton Rouge Gallery Facebook page

Non-old-paper related but still needing to beheld - Doug Kershaw: Cajun fiddler, moon singer, beat poet.

Spanish Moss - Doug Kershaw

File' (the Cajun French word for powdered sassafras used as a gumbo ingredient) was an omnipresent force of Cajun music when I was kid, deftly getting Cajun with it inna rawk party stylee. You couldn't swing a funnel cake at a church fair without hitting a member of File'. I envy the succinct confidence and existential footing they exhibit by naming their album Cajun Dance Band.

Pine Grove Blues - File

Ok, don't just stand there marveling at old paper you found in the trash. Go get Beau Jocque some goddamn cornbread already!

Give Him Cornbread - Beau Jocq...

too big a lunch at Roberto's

The way to a man's heart is to ladle some kind of buttery, seafood-based sauce over it.

My coworker and I had too big a lunch at Roberto's, sharing the BBQ Shrimp over corn grit cake and the chocolate chip bread pudding. He had the chicken fried steak and I, the Catfish Billy, meaning there is a piece of grilled catfish hibernating under all that tangy crawfish etouffe. Shrimp remoulade salads were involved. Also pictured is the levee, at which I would stare or atop I would stroll all day if I could.