Hey!

Warren Storm ending his set at the 2010 Swamp Pop Festival in Gonzales, LA

Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
GIVERS, In Light (Lafayette's own, streaming at NPR)
Four Tet, Pause
Matmos, Quasi-Objects
Autechre, Untitled

1. Hey, check out my buddy's John's "Help Desk" program in the paper! This is BBQ Champ John for those of you following along.
2. Hey, I turned in my final submission draft! Totally vomiting from happiness!
3. Hey, I'm teaching this video game design class next week and shot this totally creepy video while testing out the lab.
   
   
   
   Pretty much what my whole class is like! Only 5 seats left!
   
4. Hey, I'm gonna go swimming!
5. Hey!

let me ride

Swing down, spaceship-shaped poached egg atop udon in a mildly sweet seafood broth, and let me ride.

Fela, Authority Stealing (Parts 1 & 2)
The Budos Band, The Budos Band II
Face of Man, Face of Man
George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars, T.A.P.O.A F.O.M.
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
OutKast, Aquemini

"The awesome power of a fully operational mothership", that is. Thank the mighty Ned Sublette for that deacronymization and recommendation. You know the mothership is in the Smithsonian now, right?



I'm just into Goon Squad, thinking it's good and all, but Pulitzer good? and what is Pulitzer good? Is that like Oscar good? And then whoom, it all of a sudden got good good. Like, with some magical realism time twister business, like the prediction vignettes in Perfume or the final of the finale of Six Feet Under but better, more human and a little devastating but not anihilative. Yet anyway. Get on with your funky self, Jennifer Egan!

Hello, breakfast!

1. Hello, breakfast! I liked when Sylvester would address Tweetie Bird that way, tucking his (his?) squirming body between two slices of bread.
2. Finished What is the What. Five outta five stars, exactly the story it needed to be. I have a larger review started that I might send out through a louder channel.
3. Biked to the free fan fest in the parking lot of Tiger Stadium before Bayou Country Superfest. It's not that far in real bike rider terms, but was an epic feat in sedentary fatass terms. I need a daiquiri sized cup holder mounted on my handlebars and a milkcrate fitted with iPod speaker mounts in order to Pee Wee Herman that shit up right More about the show in the Record Crate on Wednesday
4. Tzatziki: Greek yogurt, cucumbers, dill, garlic, lemon, salt. Great on sandwiches and in a Scrabble board.
5. The book is really almost finished but I'd rather start writing two new books than finish it.

Everybody, what's the word?

King Tubby, Freedom Sounds in Dub
James Gang, Rides Again
The O'Jay's, Family Reunion
Clifton Chenier, Sings the Blues

1. On my last lap with the book. This playlist was an attempt to get across in print a sparsely attended Keith Frank show at a backwoods zydeco club. So imagine all that on shuffle with a tremendous amount of natural echo from a stage with a barn motif inside a barn renovated and converted to look as little as possible like a barn inside, but looks like a dilapidated one from outside. If you haven't already, go see Keith Frank perform before he makes good on his threat of retiring.
2. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I saw Gil Scott-Heron on the street in the French Quarter back in 2008. Maya and I were making our way through the tourist crowds to get to the Lush store when I saw a guy I swore was Kanye, who was in town for the Essence festival that weekend. Then I realized it was pretty whitey of me to see a fashion attenuated black man and think "That's Kanye!" Then a block later, there was Gil Scott-Heron, tall, skinny in the shades, a hat and a yellow aloha shirt, and I thought, no, really? Gil Scott-Heron was a revelation to me in my college years after I dug past "Televised."
   
   
   "B-Movie" was potent protest, a old 70's holdout calling out the then current President for being a fraud, a turncoat, a monster. It was now, then, and continues in its relevance. It was egalitarian, elegant, elephantine. Everybody, what's the word? Have you heard about Johannesburg? Yeah! well, sorta. I mean, I know U2 won't play Sun City but I'm not sure what exactly that solved. And haven't they payed there since? All that ran through my mind when I saw GS-H becuse it's how his mind runs and in turn runs his mouth and I was all, OK, whitey up on the earth, the one older black guy with a Stagger Lee swagger, done up like Panama Jack is not Gil Scott-Heron. Then I read when I got home that he'd played a side stage at the Essence festival that night.
3. Somebody is playing a subdudes album at the pool. I'm not sure how that happened. Did we run out of Jimmy Buffet songs? Did the rapture actually happen and all the Clear Channel classic rock radio programmers were called yonder? Whatever brought this on, I'm not complaining.
4. I just saw my friend Sanjay do the gnarliest belly flop off the diving board. Then he did another. What a trooper!
5. There are countless ways that writing can be paralleled with woodworking, but the truest way is that you aren't really making something pretty until there is a pile of sawdust on the floor and your arm is sore form holding the sander in just the right way.

highball wasted version

Torlief Thedeén, Benjamin Britten: The Complete Suites for Solo Cello
The Soft Pink Truth, So
Now Ensemble, Awake
The Twilight Singers, Dynamite Steps

Right now, as all this contrapuntal, masterly modern music is being doled out, I want right now to hear the most slobbery drunk version of "Tropical Heat Wave." Like falling down, holding on to the mic stand for dear life, WERR HABBIN A HEAT WAIF, TORPICAL HEAT WAIF, letting one's cigarette fall into one's highball wasted version. Just saying, this is what I want from a new Twilight Singers album, but I'll take what I can get.

Somebody

Ezekiel's wheel over the pool

The B-52's, Wild Planet
The Beatles, Abbey Road
Smash Mouth, All Star Smash Hits
The Reignng Sound, Time Bomb High School
Luke Haines, Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and the Auteurs
Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Treme, Season 2
Black Francis, Bluefinger

Someone at the record store loves the B-52's. Somebody in my house loves Abbey Road. That same somebody got an Amazon gift card for her birthday and wants to get a record player with it, because she is a natural born hipster. Somebody can't wait to train his daughter in the fine art of record shopping, for its one of the few specialist skills he has to offer. Somebody at the pool liked Smash Mouth so much they played a whole Smash Mouth album from their laptop. Somebody has a whole Smash Mouth album on their laptop. Think about that. I mean, maybe if you owned a t-shirt shop at the beach... Somebody on twitter bought Time Bomb High School because I won't stop the hard sell until their version of "Stormy Weather" is recognized as the official version, much in the way Bobby Darin's is for "Mack the Knife". Somebody is trying to remember if he likes the Autuers. Somebody does. Somebody probably regrets having picked "Badly Drawn Boy" as his nickname. Somebody doesn't about "Black Francis"; it sounds better with each passing day.

Media: Somebody has stuff in the new issue of OffBeat: a review of the Help's Keep the Beat, a review of Dickie Landry's Fifteen Saxophones, and a little gush of praise for Guitar Wolf who play at Siberia in New Orleans on June 8.

Art punk fixes everything.

There is a flickering light in the stairwell that synced right up with the one in my head.

Art Brut, Brilliant! Tragic!
The Mekons, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen
Talking Heads, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

Everything seemed to be going astray today - lights were flickering, people were dropping anchor, icebergs moving faster than they are supposed to, one thing slips from the steady hand while another lands in an iron grasp, and I'm apparently going to hell on top of it - then this song came on and it all got better.


The Mekons, "After Six." Art punk fixes everything.

The other momentary cessation of madness - this one with the long legs turns ten today. I'm really just that guy with the vest on the tarmac, waving those little cones at the soaring jet of a daughter Maya is. I'm proudest to simply still be employed at her airline after all these years.




Back to flickering - is it wrong of me to find humor in the fact that we will one day all be driven mad by the flickering shadows of wind turbines? Is that really how we are going to go out?