Ah, I don't like that other world!

Maya got very perturbed at a neighborhood potluck this weekend when some rowdy boy tossed a lighter into this fire. I heard her behind a slammed door exclaim to her compatriot girls, "That was so stupid!"

The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour
Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Grand Isle (out in Feb. '11 - it is killer!)
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Terry Riley, Autodreamographical Tales
John Fahey, America
Charlemagne Palestine, Strumming Music for Piano, Harpsichord and Strings Ensemble

"In another world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.

"In another world! Ah, I don't like that other world! I don't like it," he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother's eyes. "Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one's own and other people's, would be a good thing, and yet I'm afraid of death, awfully afraid of death." He shuddered. "But do drink something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let's go to the Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs."

His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

and shortly after

He took up his book again. "Very good, electricity and heat are the same thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the other in the equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then what of it? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt instinctively….

Anna Karenina is pretty good, yep. I laid the rest of the Beatles catalog - post Rubber Soul - on the wee Beatlemaniac and we are both drawn to Magical Mystery Tour, an album I never really think about when I Think Beatles. We talked this morning how weird "Only a Northern Song" is, how it all sounds "out of tune" in her words. She said she didn't like "Fool on the Hill." I said, " I think it's about Jesus, you know, how he was on the cross on the hi-" and she cut me off with my arms outstretched. "I know. I don't like to think about all that because I don't believe in it."

Her atheism is nothing new to us, nor is it particularly tied to ours - she acquired it naturally, on the street from her friends, where all the formative things are found. I wasn't sure whether her quick dismissal was because "I don't want it clouding my thinking" or "I'm choosing not to fool with such foolishness. I'll take my fairy tales as attractive teenage wizards, thank you very much." Either way, I approve. And I approve should she make an about face somewhere down the line and fall into Jesus' open arms. She's gonna fall into somebody's.



RIP Captain Beefheart. It was heartwarming (for some selfish reason) to find so much outpouring on the medias social about his passing. He was the good, weird America. Check him out phoning it in on the Hot Line for American Bandstand, circa 1966. Check out what I want America to look and sound like.



David Toub has some great advice with what to listen to today, so I'm following. Somewhere I have a story about visiting a shut-in in Los Angeles, a fellow music nerd that I didn't realize was a shut-in until I'd flown out there, playing Charlemagne Palestine for me. I was getting fed up with him, it was the third of a four-day visit and I was trapped in the house without a car finally reaching my saturation with listening to crazy records, so when Palestine's Strumming went on with deafening volume - it is just two notes repeated in succession forever - I'd had enough.

I walked out side with my last three cigarettes thinking what did I get myself into? How naive am I? Then I heard the record radiate from the house; not blare from it like party music but more like gamma radiation penetrating the walls out into the street, causing mutation in anyone out there except this was a quiet neighborhood in Torrance, CA  where no one was ever on the street, so I was this radiation's sole benefactor. Strumming is all overtones, much like my visit was and I realized it was all this guy was capable of. He had no melody, just sound bouncing off the walls hopefully turning into something. I let my cigarette drop in his yard, the yard he claimed he hadn't stepped in for six years, only leaving the house in the car from inside the garage, and opened the door to a deluge of overtone. The universe was being titrated through this record and hit me full force. 


Here is it with the composer realizing it for carillon. Thanks to the ever-informative Robert Gable at aworks for pointing me to this.

The John Fahey selection is just cuz.


John Fahey, "America"

Jeez Louise

My lunch yesterday at the Chimes: charbroiled catfish poboy with a side of red beans & rice. You can probably find this exact order embedded in my DNA.

The Soft Pack, The Soft Pack
Belle & Sebastian, Step Into My Office, Baby
Spoon, Transference
The Walkmen, Lisbon

It is the time for year-ending and I feel less defintive and more fickle than usual. I still think Titus is on top, but really the best album I've heard for the entire year that lasted from yesterday through today is the s/t debut from the Soft Pack. Jeez Louise, it's good...


The Soft Pack, "Parasites"

But then it is tapping all my right nostalgia buttons and that is terrible criteria by which to judge the music of Now, so where does that leave me? Back in spring, I'd've given a spare kidney to the new Drive-By Truckers album and the other night I couldn't think what it was called. I just dismissed Spon half-heartedly in a Facebook volley and here I am minutes later all over it. It's tougher than it looks, being an arbiter of taste and all.

Also, I've never given the Walkmen the time of day simply because I was such a fan of Jonathan Fire*Eater from whose demise they sprang and I never got over it.


Jonathan Fire*Eater, "When Prince Was a Kid"

But I'll do it, have no fear. Bullet points at the ready.

looking for Cosmos

I am seeing the world reflected in the more than the cover of Tom McCarthy's C, all its sinews and broken transmissions and mysteries of sparks flying through the air, but I think I'm saying "uncle" to this book. My year's reading has already been solidly about things falling apart and I'd like to see it put back together. I stuffed it in my backpack and instead searched for Carl Sagan's Cosmos on my phone and despite the billions upon billions of eBooksellers, it ain't there! That's what's wrong with us; not enough Sagan. If there is anything that needs to be read on out little devices/overlords, it is Carl Sagan. I'm not even going to look to see if Marshall McLuhan is available on the Kindle* or not because the irony might crush me like a runaway Geminid meteorite.

Lou Reed, Transformer
Titus Andronicus, The Monitor
The Soft Pack, The Soft Pack

At least twice this year I've thought I'd really like to skateboard around to the Titus Andronicus album, one of those times being just now, despite my never having successfully skated boards to anyone's lowest expectations - I'm clumsy and unbalanced on the whole and derive little pleasure from accenting those states - and yet I wanna do some awesome tricks with ridiculous childish names while I listen to The Monitor. It might end up being my album of the year for that very reason.


Titus Andronicus, "A More Perfect Union"

A friend posted that the Mac Mini in her kitchen was stuck playing Transformer over and over. You could have worse computer problems. I popped it on as I washed the dishes, my phone propped up on the sill sounding tinny and clattery like a transistor radio and Lou Reed circa 1972 becomes genius in that form; the music barely bleeds through and you get just him, precariously tightropewalking the razor wire separating naked sincerity and sneering contempt. People's noses come up a lot. A woman's feet become her nose in "Andy's Chest", another straps dentures to her nose in "Hangin' Around", a song I thought to be a weak Sha-Na-Na-esque throwback number on the record until last night. It's a keeper. It made me want to do a rousing acoustic version at a open mike nite, something else I'm ill-suited to execute, and lo! he did it for me.


Lou Reed, "Hangin' Round" (Acoustic version)

I've been meaning to hit up the Soft Pack for some time since ace rawk-riter Joe Bonomo has been all on them in his medias social and probably otherwise, and they pay off.


The Soft Pack, "Down on Lovin'"

* Ugh. Of course, I looked and, of course, it isn't. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man should come pre-installed on every Kindle.


Taken at the bus stop after giving up looking for Cosmos. We have a million wires strung up and nothing going across them.

because of the plague

Why Virginia College had this guy on a float for the Baton Rouge Christmas parade is anyone's guess.

The Pointer Sisters, The Pointer Sisters
Various, Takoma Eclectic Sampler
LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening

Speaking of Allen Toussaint and music I used to hate, Nick Spitzer played and old Pointer Sisters tune written by Toussaint on American Roots the other night and truthfully, its never occurred to me to look into their back catalog at all because of the plague "I'm So Excited" upon our species. Remember when they were on the charts at the same time as ZZ Top and their songs were not terribly distinguishable from each other? And to think some people long for the Reagan years.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, a great song by the Pointer Sisters.


The Pointer Sisters, "Yes We Can Can"

My dalliance lasted for precisely one song. Now I'm more into steel guitar/dobro guy Cal Hand. Try not to totally trip out on the one below. And LCD Soundsystem. I intended to start listening the year down to find a top ten; the only definite entry is the Titus Andronicus album - but I'm pretty much all over the place.


Cal Hand and Leo Kottke, "They Only Moved the Stage" from The Wylie Butler


LCD Soundsystem, "Dance Yrself Clean"

This might be my favorite song of the year even though it came out last year. And no, I'm not kidding. I accept that it might have been put together as a joke, but the joke imploded or exploded or did something that only Carl Sagan can explain. I kinda choke up every time I hear it.


Symphony of Science/Carl Sagan - "A Glorious Dawn" ft. Stephen Hawking

New Drive-By Truckers song

I'm not usually such a marketing tool but I love those motherfuckers.

Drive-By Truckers, "Used to Be a Cop" from their forthcoming album Go-Go Boots. Click forth for "webisodes" from the band. Or watch below.


The Go-Go Boots Episodes - Episode 1 - Drive-By Truckers from Drive-By Truckers on Vimeo.

Funburgers for everyone!

Incrediburgible! Old Burger Chef and Jeff commercial. Thanks, Todd, for reminding me. There was one across the river when I was a kid in Illinois. We'd go there for a change of pace from McDonald's.

Dr. John, Destively Bonnaroo
Allen Toussaint, Life, Love and Faith

Saw the new True Grit last night. It's a movie mostly about rope, I think. There is rope everywhere: stringing people up, rescuing them, holding up the tents, keeping away snakes, etc. Even Mattie Rose's omnipresent braids that heep her head on straight are tendrils of rope. It's probably about other things too, like the art of enjoying making ones movies which is my favorite thing about Coen Brothers films; even when the movie drags, and they all drag, you can tell they love it. But yeah, the movie is mostly about rope with side attribute of elegant smart-mouthing.

Jeff Bridges' crusty grumble made me think mostly about Tom Waits and Dr. John, both of whom have Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame nominations or inductations or whatever, which is cool. I wore myself out on Tom Waits years ago and am just in recent years finding that special Dr. John place in my heart. Becoming newly acquainted to the south as a kid, Dr. John was the corniest-of-the-corny, in the goddamn right-place-but-musta-been-the-wrong-time all over you like noxious gas cloud, all the time.

I hated Stevie Wonder for many years because of "I Just Called To Say I Love You."  My hatred of that omnipresent song  took full fiery blossom in my adolescence and my mom told a family friend that it was my favorite song and I was put in the position of acting appreciative when said friend presented me with a 45 of it at the Christmas party. The friend was all, "It's the song you like, right?" and I couldn't figure out who my mom's  joke was really on, so I said yes, and she said, "Well, c'mon, let's play it." I put it on the old console record player (that I woudl kinda kill to have now) that sat in the front room we only used for holidays, and we collectively grooved on the punchline of an amorphous Christmas joke.

I'm pretty sure that was the last record that ever got played on that console stereo; it was probably still on the turntable when it was hauled to the street to make way for that same friend's old piano, a temporary spot for it while they moved houses and twenty-five years later, it's still in that room. Sometimes it gets played at Christmas too.

This went a lot heavier than I intended. What I really wanted to say is that I hope the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame finds some loophole through which they can give Harry Dean Stanton an award and then put Stanton, Waits and the good Dr. on the same stage fleshing out "Right Place, Wrong Time" and the collective nexus of weirdness among those three will open an extra-dimensional portal where we can transcend Al Tis and Become One, and Burger Chef and Jeff will be there at the end of the light tunnel with Funburgers for everyone!



Edited to add: I just read Matt Bell's great terrible gift story up on The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog so I dropped mine in there as well. It's like the prize with your Christmas Funburger!

pretty song

Carpathian Forest, "The Eclipse/The Raven"

Carpathian Forest, Through Chasm, Caves And Titan Woods

My voice is ragged from teaching, droning on about document building strategies and style templates and whatnot and I had a 10-minute window today to shake it off and thought Ah! Norwegian black metal! Those guys hate their fellow man even more than a whole putrid phalanx of software instructors, and there just so happened to be in my little feed reader thingy the top 100 Norwegian black metal albums of all time, as if I summoned it from some ghastly blood ritual conducted in an unheated, abandoned trailer at the ragged edge of civilzation's tattered skirt, and at number 17 was Carpathian Forest and I was all Yes! Yes! Consume me now, unfeeling void! Pierce the thin, jaundiced skin of human endeavor with your filthy claws and release the rot from its sac, and they raged and they raged and I was diggin it like a grave because at times of stress I become the fourteen-year-old I never was in real life and just as the horns were starting to sprout, here comes a rather pretty song, presented above. Sung by this guy!
 

Natterfrost from Carpathian Forest, as shot by Black Metal photographer extraordinaire Peter Beste.

Sure, it's a corny setting of Edgar Allen Poe, growled by iceblind, drunken, fascist, pagans who pretend they are monsters so hard they become them, but it's really a pretty song.

Oh and hey, not metal related: my friend Traci Burns is a badass of writing and has a kinky lil' piece up in Fiction Fix 8! You should go read it. Go on, now! Do what you're told! Hail Satan.


Gaahl of Gorgoroth (#11 on the list) interviewed about his influences.