whiskey-bullet-fart

More cross-the-bone-cut Colombian ribs at tailgate. Like pornography or museum dinosaurs, every presentation of it is like brand new. It goes good with a powdered donut chaser.

Tom Franklin, Smonk    
The Southern Review, Vols. 46.4 (Autumn 2010) and 45.2 (Spring 2009)
Book of Love, Book of Love
Paul Burch, Last of My Kind

OK, remember Book of Love? I was stretching for something just out of reach in a review needing a writing this afternoon and there among the windchimes was Book of Love. This record doesn't exactly hold up, nor does it completely collapse under all those synth drums but it was one that hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe it was the half-asleep female vocals, insistent but not so insistent about its insistence; I was squarely tuned to the diva histrionics from DMode's David Gahan and Alison Moyet in her Yaz(oo) yearz, and not yet up for Siouxsie's caterwaul when this came round the mountain of bad old music that seperated my teenage years from all the new bad music. "I Touch Roses" was the big one, but, though it sounds a little Pointer Sisters "I'm So Excited" to me now, part of me is still all up in this song. So Good (good good good...)


Book of Love. "You Make me Feel so Good"

Smonk is dead! Long live the evil bastard in a corner of my brain that will be forever sullied by his beguiling, pestilent nature. What a great book, unending in hostile texture like the desert before homesteaders but with a  delicious flicker of snakebit human horror in everyone involved. Each planetary turn of the plot was a surprise but really, not anywhere are shocking as the surprise in Tony Earley's "Mr. Tall" in Southern Review Vol 45.2. I was never much of a Boy Scout, I never got further than Bobcat, but Earley wrote a true scout's manual in my heart with Jim the Boy years ago. The innocent wonder of boyhood has never been captured so well, except maybe on Paul Burch's Last of My Kind, an album of songs based on the novel. There's none of it on YouTube, but seek out "Polio" or "Harvey Harstell's Farm" or the whole damn thing. Anywho, Tony Early's story about mountain people and the inertia of loneliness takes such a shocking turn there were skid marks left on the page. That's writing!

I read a million other short things yesterday during the meaty lull after tailgating. I read some more of Muriel Spark but I don't know if I'm feeling it. I need to read something less than whiskey-bullet-fart manly after Smonk, but Spark might be too not-so for me. I will admit to being one of those white male readers that reads mostly white male authors, especially the ones that seem a touch uncomfortable being so. Who could? You have to practically be a cartoon character to be a man.


My wife made this amazing taco soup last night and it is better than any tacos or soup combined.

the spontaneous appearance of hearts

Favorite.

The Beatles, Rubber Soul and Help!

My daughter has entered the Beatles phase of her development so am re-entering one myself with a cache from the library. We got Help!, Rubber Soul, A Hard Day's Night (and the movies for both), Sgt. Peppers and Please Please Me to start with. Drummer she is, she has declared Ringo her favorite.

I don't push things onto her, plus what kid would share my musical taste? I can barely stand the music I like. She does however pick up on things I'm listening to and runs with them. She made an impromptu list of her favorite groups: Owl City, The Beatles, Joanna Newsom and "the guy that does 'Hydra Fancies'*" so I think she's in pretty good shape on her own


I'm certain I am not the first to publicly wonder if the boys are forming a swastika in this insert from Rubber Soul. I like the spontaneous appearance of hearts.

I'd kinda forgotten how much I like "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."



* Of Montreal, from the 2010 Believer Music Issue CD with which she absconded and plays on repeat.

stupid computers

The 2010 Oxford American Music Issue, an actual magazine made of spirit and ink and shiny paper,  is now available for pre-order. I have a piece in it, but even I haven't seen the actual whole thing and I'm still excited about it, just from the sparse Blue Note style cover. I actually don't even know if that is the final cover design; I'm excited about the possible placeholder for the cover! Get excited with me!

The Halo Benders, The Rebel's Not In
Jonathan Richman, O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth
Tom Franklin, Smonk 
Chris Brokaw, VDQQ:Solo Acousitc Volume 3


I'm rather fond of the Newspeak CD. I love this music student band thing.


Newspeak, David T. Little's "sweet light crude"

Calvin Johnson's detuned honk of a voice usually kills the charm of his 1000 bands for me after a couple songs, but his subwoofer patter on The Rebel's Not In is the sound the cheery porpoise's make as they push the surfboard of the sleeping Dick van Dyke that is my weary heart back safely to shore. This album churns through with surprising mechanistic precision, like a giant machine made out of eager teenagers united in sinister purpose, like the success of Senior Skip-Out day rests solely on the coordination of their efforts.


"Devil City Destiny"

I keep thinking I'm ready to ask the Lord to deliver me from Smonk's raptor clutch and then something happens like the whore Evavangeline turns 'round to see all them orphans in the woods and I'm hooked all over again. So instead I will appeal the deaf Lord to let me lick every wound in the book and watch every effortless-as-a-tumbleweed sentence trundle by. I'm sure the Lord is too busy for requests like this.

And Jonathan Richman does just that one thing, like an motor component for a model long discontinued and he does it so perfectly and succinct then there is no sense in upgrading or retooling or anything. This new album of his is a timeless treasure. Instead of going digital, I half expect his next release to be a whispered love note in a seashell, wrapped up in Christmas paper and set out on card tables in front of every closed record store.


Jonathan Richman, "O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth"

By the way, Baton Rougeans, the Compact Disc Store on Jefferson, one of the last one record stores standing is closing soon-ish and word is everything is on sale so get to it. Thanks go to Brad Pope for hanging onto the place all these years while we ruin everything with our stupid computers.

There's a good little article in Blurt about Chris Brokaw, a friend of a friend with whom I had lunch and politely disagreed over Michael McDonald. Shut up, I get that you all love fucking Michael McDonald and I bequeath my allocated portion of him to you, OK? Anyway, Chris Brokaw's albums are tight, understated, majestic.

The Bears Acknowledgment

The Monster Club at Couyon's bears acknowledgment..

Peter Hammill/Roger Eno, The Appointed Hour
Newspeak, Sweet Light Crude
Michael Bach, John Cage: The Number Pieces 3: One⁸
Stephen Drury, Mayumi Miyata, Irvine Arditti, John Cage: The Works for Violin: Two⁴

Missy Mazzoli makes magic music.



It's three PM already? I wonder if there's coffee left. There is! And Cookies! Left over from, I don't know what they are left over from! When I worked a Major Software Concern in the Pacific Northwest, my office was around the corner from the media conference room, one in which the Concern's Media Personality CEO did TV appearances announcing things and those appearances were always catered and the unspoken rule was that 30 minutes after the meeting was over we could go scavenge whatever was left: largely bagels and fruit but OK! But once, during the announcement of a new version of a particular year's Important Software, they had omelet chefs out there for the press and dignitaries and I got in line anyway, hiding my security badge.

A friend got an invite to an orgy or a swinger's meet-up or something  like that once and on the invite it said there would be an omelet chef and she was mulling about whether she should go or not. I said, "Dude! Free omelets!" or something like that. I don't remember if she went. One of the early writers for OutsideLeft went to one and wrote a story about it and the whole things sounded like not my scene, omelet station or no.. .

I feel better with some coffee in me. And it's only two. I never reset my wall clock for the time change.

The Bears Acknowledgment is a pretty good band name deserving of a band, I think.

a spender of a life

Is this different...

Pastels/Tenniscoats, Two Sunsets
William S. Burroughs, Interzone
Tom Franklin, Smonk
Mark Richard, Charity


...from this?

How people can be in perpetual meetings day in an day out and not become over-processed nugget concentrations of their true pre-meeting forms is beyond me. Maybe that's the point. I do accept that some are better for the processing, and that the process yeilds results of some kind pretty much relaibly but, man. It is why I did not become a philosophy major, a spender of a life trying to be right about things about which no one involved cares. I go hyperbole when I'm brain-tired.

That Pastels record is just lovely. I think this is the song that led me to finally exhale when I got to the bus stop last night, but I'm not sure. I can't listen to it because I'm still in a meeting.


"Yomigaeru"

"ATTENTION SHAMELESS OWNERS"

ARP, The Soft Wave
Brian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy
Bauhaus,  1979-1983, Volume One
The Birthday Party, Mutiny/The Bad Seed 
Tom Franklin, Smonk 

Media Announcement: My story "ATTENTION SHAMELESS OWNERS" appears in the freshly revamped Front Porch from the University of Texas. Texas State University at San Marcos. Ed to add: Sorry for saying you were UT, Texas State. Apologies to Bobcats everywhere.

Coming back from New Orleans last night, I rocked out without a shred of ironic distance to Bauhaus.

"Dark Entries"

I'm pressed for time today so here are some things I ate this weekend. Above: the lamb sliders with tomato chutney and herbed goat cheese at Three Muses. Below: barbecued chicken at tailgate.

Look! How blue the sky!

Media Announcement: Here is my contribution to HTMLGIANT's Literary Magazine Club discussions on the most recent issue of NYTrant: "A reaction to the letter Breece D’J Pancake wrote but did not send to his mother before his 1979 suicide." Enjoy!

Muriel Spark, All the Stories of Muriel Spark

Folks are abuzz about Spark! I like this first story about how she is a ghost selectively appearing to old friends and neatly relating that to reminiscence. Her eloquence and poised prose is a nice break from the rough man talk I've been all up in as of late. Were I a ghost, I'd probably choose to spend my limbo years fucking with people. Moving really stupid things like the lawnmower or turning a plant by a few degrees, the kinds of things that the living would notice but would feel silly remarking upon.



Look! How blue the sky! How big the country! I don't know why I'm so excited! Maybe I'll read Walt Whitman on my phone during the bus ride home!


Life is all abuzz! Edited a big magazine story! Or rather received edits and pretty much agreed with them! I decided I'm not going to do Sweet Tooth anymore! My darling wife's birthday tonight! Tailgating tomorrow! England, Christmas! Who knows what the weekend holds?!