Look at this guy!

Teddy in one of his many capes. Photo by Frank McMains.

Norman Mailer, An American Dream
Cotton Jones, Paranoid Cocoon and Tall Hours in the Glowstream

Media Announcement Addendum: Look at this guy! In case you missed it, the Teddy's Juke Joint story is avaiable on the WRKF website, as is a slideshow of Frank's excellent photographs of the place.Thanks to Swede, Frank and Teddy, and the flu for my sonorous delivery.

Speaking of look at this guy, An American Dream is bananas. It was originally serialized Dickens-style in Esquire, which lends it a sort of mustache-twirling, cliff-hanger air. Here the moon begs our hero to throw himself off the balcony.

Something in the deep of that full moon, some tender and not so innocent radiance traveled fast as the thought of lightning across the sky, out from the depths of the dead in those caverns of the moon, out and a leap through space and into me. And suddenly I understood the moon. Believe it if you will. The only true journey of knowledge is from the depth of one being to the heart of another and I was nothing but open raw depths at that instant alone on the balcony, looking down on Sutton Place, the spirit of the food and drink I had ingested wrenched out of my belly and upper gut, leaving me in raw being, there were clefts and rents which cut like geological faults right through all the lead and concrete and kapok and leather of my ego, that mutilated piece of insulation, I could feel my Being , ridiculous enough, what!

It keeps going and going. He hoists out-of-control machismo, wrapped in the leather of his ego, aloft like he's Prometheus bringing light and wisdom down the mountain to the mortals. I've never read a Norman Mailer book before, was really more aware of him as a cultural figure, but I'm into this. Reading it is like boxing with your drunken id.

I can't get over Cotton Jones, they might be my favorite discovery of the year, and they are playing here next week. The moon smiles upon my Being.


"Up a Tree (Went This Heart I Have)"

double-half-nelson-meta

It's like a callus on the hand of a tree goddess.

Norman Mailer, An American Dream
Morton Feldman, "Madame Press Died Last Week At Ninety" (via Little Brother)
Aki Takahashi,  Feldman: Piano; Piano Piece 1955; Two Intermissions; Illusions; Extensions 3; Palais De Mari
Zeena Parkins, Necklace 


Media Announcements: I'm gonna be on the radio tonight talking about one of my favorite places in the world, Teddy's Juke Joint at 4:44 and 6:44 PM CST, 89.3 WRKF, Baton Rouge and online http://wrkf.org. We talk about wearing capes, Star Hill Plantation, and the art of spinning records. I had the flu when we did the edits so I come off extra manly and sonorous. The full interview will be on their website along with some great photos by Frank McMains later today.

Also, my review of the Ted Hearne's chamber music song cycle Katrina Ballads on the Oxford American site. Nice to see Austin L. Ray, who I worked with on my few foray's at Paste, up in there laying it down about Justin Townes Earle. Also OA editor Marc Smirnoff goes double-half-nelson-meta on Steve Almond.

The reason it's called the Net is because it is woven from threads of us all talking about ourselves and each other. Welcome to the New Music-musing on the Internet to everyone and sometimes to no one but yourself blues, Little Brother. He's got a good profile of Morton Feldman up on his blog that you should check out if you are into that sort of thing, or even if you are not.


Numinous performing "Madame Press never had to Holler at Morty" which has some relation to the piece Little Brother played.


I never met Morton Feldman, but I did John Cage, Valentine's Day 1992 when I interviewed him on the radio. He told a story about himself and (I'm pretty sure it was) Morton Feldman walking through a park in NYC when they saw a fire truck with lights blaring but no sirens trying to push its way through the gridlock traffic. It was making such slow headway that they started trailing it on foot, until it turned down an alley and suddenly disappeared. "It was a quiet fire engine!" Mr. Cage excitedly and softly chuckled.


Eclipse Quartet plays Zeena Parkins's Visible/Invisible

cocksure bounce

A version of the dream.

Eno, Moebius, Roedelius, and Plank, Begegnungen and Begegnungen II (via ROOT BLOG)
John Vanderslice, Green Grow the Rushes (from his site)
Norman Mailer, An American Dream
Lloyd Cole, Rattlesnakes

Read Norman Mailer. Get a new tailor.
      - Lloyd Cole, "Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?"



I went and checked out An American Dream over lunch inspired by Lloyd Cole popping into my head (he and Richard Buckner ride the same elevated train around my thinking) and this most excellent dispatch from the Oxford American's The Part-Time Voyeur. It has occurred to me that nobody cares what makes me want to check out what books from the library, in case you among this blog's dwindling readership were wondering. And yet...

Anyway, I felt tough just walking across campus with it in my hand and these excellent Eno, Moebius, Roedelius, and Plank artifacts bleeping and throbbing in my ears, adding cocksure bounce to my gait.  I was ready to bite a fucker's ear off if it came to it, but I made it back to the office unchallenged in any way. I considered walking on to the Family Dollar to get a new belt in a half-hearted attempt to fulfill the second part of Mr. Cole's recommendations, but that can wait for another day. I'll keep you posted.


Norman Mailer and Rip Torn, the infamous Maidstone brawl.

Richard Buckner at the Shaw Center, Baton Rouge, 9/14/2010

Richard Buckner at the Shaw Center, Baton Rouge, 9/14/2010

I am given to hyperbole about him, I know, but Richard Buckner is an amazing and singular talent. Nuclear fusion takes place in the dash in his version of singer-songwriter. He rotated through three guitars and a decade plus of songs in with Swiss clock precision, letting the intricate fugues of one forlorn, elliptical tune evolve into that of the next, all the while towering, brooding into the mic with a soul-pained scowl. It was a little like having one of the heads on Mt. Rushmore sing to you.

E-Bow should give this guy an endorsement deal, for he seems to be the only owner of one that uses it in the service of music than against it. E-bow's  are fun - I have one - but they are generally best kept in the rare quiet hours of guitar solitude when you want to pretend you are a one man bad Santana. Buckner creates locust swarms on the fly using it and loop pedals, stark landscapes in which his tunes unfold. They should've had him soundtrack The Road with that thing.

The next day after a show like that I want it to rain all day and be situated so I can sit home and play guitar and listen to Felt records. Buckner namechecks the cult band in "Ocean Cliff Clearing", which he played that evening. The only song I didn't hear that I wanted was "Believer." 

Another dude was listing off to him after the show the songs he's never heard him sing, and Buckner, sitting with him at the edge of the stage said, "Oh yeah, I haven't played that in years. I oughta put a request wheel on my website or something. " I saw him once ten years ago, and tried to talk to him after and clammed up awestruck, and truthfully, he was in a bit of a state after that show, but last night,  after the locusts and heartbreak were sung out, he was jovial, even a little goofy when I talked to him. He talked about playing a little ancient opera house in a small town in Maryland or someplace where it was a bunch of farmer's and autistic kids at his show, and we talked about how disarming driving through that I-10 tunnel  outside of Mobile is. He said about Davie's Uptown, the club I saw him at many moons ago in Kansas City, "The best thing about playing there is that Gate's BBQ is right around the corner."  At Gate's you have to know your order the instant you walk in the door because the staff starts yelling at you for it and gets testy if you hesitate. I mentioned this and he said, "Oh yeah, man. Burnt end sandwich!"

I'm doing this post backwards because who wants to open for Richard Buckner? Drew Landry from Lafayette did a great job, laying out howling protests about the oil spill and a really good dirty song about a Baton Rouge roller rink during his set. Drew is the guy that played his guitar before the Presidential Commission on the BP Oil Spill a while back and has a tune "BP Blues" released on Warner Bros., available on iTunes with the bulk of proceeds go to saveourgulf.org. Drew also blogs the oil spill cleanup efforts and lack thereof at DirtyCajuns.com and runs the spectacular Bourque's Social Club in Scott, LA, which I hit up anytime I can. Drew fights the good fight and is generally an awesome dude; he didn't take a swing at me when I called him "John Cougar Fishin' Camp."

Felt, The Pictorial Jackson Review, Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty, and The Splendour of Fear


Felt, "The Optimist and the Poet"


Richard Buckner, "Ocean Cliff Clearing" from 2009 in Salt Lake City

Media Announcements: My review of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story is up on the Oxford American site and the strings of your heart will go twaaaannnnnggg in this week's Record Crate with Bill Kircher, The Legendary Shack Shakers, Hank William's lookalikes and Whiskeytown's Caitlin Cary all appearing in town this week.

sees the facets of himself playing out in the chambers of his gun

Catfish Lafayette at Zeeland's. I like to think I get two cornbreads because I am a big shot.

Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues
Richard Buckner, Since
Mark Eitzel, Music for Courage & Confidence

Media Announcements: After that lunch, all I have is media announcements, but I have a lot of them. I forgot to link to this thing I wrote about Shooter Jennings for OffBeat, who played in New Orleans a couple nights ago. I'm right now writing a thing about Justin Townes Earle and trying to not have the same thing to say.

Also, Richard Buckner, profiled in panting adoration by yours truly in Country Roads recently, is playing at the Shaw Center, downtown baton Rouge tonight, and I'd love for alla y'all to come because he really is that good.


"Blue and Wonder"

Also, noted author Jack Pendarvis is on a multi-socially-networked mission to bring back Bronk, the detective show created by Carroll O'Connor starring Jack Palance, and I support this. Watch as Bronk sees the facets of himself playing out in the chambers of his gun.



The only way that intro could be better if Bronk had been a Quinn Martin Production, but I guess the lack of a narrator lends Bronk some mystery. I just wish my life's every incedent was introduced by Hank Simms, the Quinn Martin intro guy, Hank Simms. Imaging getting out of bed, flinging open the drapes with Hank Simms  and having Hank Simms declaring today's episode of your life to be "A Tangle of Vipers" or "An Admirer's Conundrum?" Anyone remember Banyon? Cannon?




Not a QM Production, but I watched Ironside religiously at my grandma's; she had a thing from Raymond Burr left over from his Perry Mason days, and I think she appreciated his characters growing feeble with her.  



I could go on, but I've never heard American Music Club dude Mark Eitzel's 2002 version of "Move On Up" before and he rocks it in his particular two steps forward, three steps back into the quicksand kind of way and it closes this rambling mess out nicely. Vote Bronk and vote often.

dusty awesomeness is waiting

Somedays I really like it around here.

D. L. Menard, Happy Go Lucky and Cajun Saturday Night



So does he.

William S. Burroughs on attending a 1975 Led Zeppelin concert:

The performers were doing their best, and it was very good. The last number, “Stairway to Heaven”, where the audience lit matches and there was a scattering of sparklers here and there, found the audience well-behaved and joyous, creating the atmosphere of a high school Christmas play. All in all a good show; neither low nor insipid. Leaving the concert hall was like getting off a jet plane.

Rock 'n' roll, yall. The whole thing is not as dry and gentlemanly as that, but almost, and is up on Arthur magazine's website. I had the librarians unearth some old actual copies of the American Mercury from the bowels of compressed storage. I'm hoping that if I keep this up, they will just let me down there myself, like the librarians in my hometown did with the "adult" section where the albums were housed. That access proved portentous in my development when a  John Cage album slid out of the stacks. Who knows what dusty awesomeness is waiting to fall on my head in the campus library! Some freaky Harry Potter library shit, I bet. Books bound in human skin. Ones that release bats upon opening. This one so far is only exacerbating my cough. 


It looks like a tome of Freemasonry.

protect your brain freedom

The Future can be yours!

Be Bop Deluxe, Axe Victim

If you are looking this morning to listen to that awesome glam record to which you've never listened before, I'd recommend Be Bop Deluxe's Axe Victim because I was looking for that very thing and there it was. If you are a true glam aficionado, you've heard this already and can disregard, but then you probably aren't even up yet and this will be 100 items down on your RSS feed or better yet you won't have an RSS feed because you are on cool, heavy substances and don't need TV when you have T. Rex, so no bother.



I responded thus to this Oxford American questionaire question:
If sleep becomes obsolete in the year 2050, what will you do with all that extra time?

Fret. Listen to even more obscure music from the 1970's. Write some terrible fiction. 

Way out here in the future, I feel good that at least the second part of that response holds true. You know, the Future of the South issue is not generating sufficient chatter considering how good it is and how smart it looks on your coffee table with that robot and all, so get yourself a copy. I understand the polymers with which the cover is printed will protect you from alien mind-control rays, so it might be a good idea to buy an extra copy to fashion into some sort of paper hat in order to protect your brain freedom.

I wouldn't normally be so shamelessly promotional like this (I would), but with my contribution to this issue I turned a lark into an idea into an article into a check into a new lawnmower and, if I was smart and took my clever nephew's advice, would turn that into an idea about lawnmowers into an article into a check into a gardener. Then I could commence to writing bad fiction about a gardener and get movies made from those fictions with groovy 70's glam rock soundtracks for no other reason that glam rock always sounds great in a movie soundtrack no matter the subject. It'll be swinging.

It seems like important alchemy is at play. American alchemy. Plus all this American Mercury fervor I have going has me sweet on this idiosyncratic rag and all the others that encourages such literary behavior in myself and others. Do the right thing and go buy a cool magazine today. You know it will fill your soul better than that pricey, crappy lunch you were going to buy will.

I'm gonna listen to Axe Victim over and over this morning. It's the Future from the past and it's lovely!