trace intersections with chaos

This is at the Bullring in Brimingham during Monday night's riots


Portugal. The Man, In the Mountain In the Cloud
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War
Margaret and the Nuclear So-and-So's, Buzzard
Malcolm Middleton, Long Dark Night
Richard Youngs, Amplifying Host
Boris, Japanese Heavy Rock Hits V.3 - "16:47:52..."
The Soft Pink Truth, So
Joe Farrell, Outback

• The riots in Birmingham UK went down right outside of my sister-in-law's apartment, where we stayed last Christmas. She is OK, but the Tesco on the opposite corner where we bought milk and hi-octane cold medicine was looted. We passed by the Bullring shopping center every time we walked to the train station. Maya and I braved the Boxing Day crowds there, right before the big VAT increase.
  
  
  Here is Maya fixin' to bite it on the ice outside Selfridges at the Bullring.
  
  
  Here's hoping the Dragon Inn made it through the night. I could go for a black and white and a sausage buddy right about now.
  
  
• It's a dissociative thing to see places you recognize on the news. "Turn on the News" came around from Zen Arcade yesterday and I remember seeing a particular street corner outside the convention center in New Orleans filled with evacuees during Katrina, or when Zeitoun rowed his boat to a drugstore I've been to a number of times. You are connected and not at all.
  
  
  Hüsker Dü, "Turn on the News"
  
  
• It's also a mark of a rather pampered life that I have the luxury of just dissociation spooling out from these trace intersections with chaos. Imagine how someone in a war-torn place feels every day. I can't. That's what made the composer story in Andrew Ervin's Extraordinary Renditions so good, you felt he did get it, or at least got at someone who did. The Liberia episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations was on last night, not the best food episode, but one where the series turned into something bigger. I wonder how people see progress in what looks like rubble when I consider the stacks of paper on my desk a somewhat hopeless situation.
  
  
• It got me thinking about the difference between perspective and focus: how much you can see vs. what you look at. War and War is a dizzying proponent of the latter, each numbered section a page-long sentence of subjects trapezing across grammatical continuity rules, each portraying one facet of an incident down to the molecule. Thing is, its actually as easy read once you submit to it, unlike Beckett's novels - probably the easiest comparison - which are Sisyphean trudges. War and War is like a repeated suspension of the air-time in a bunch of bike jumps, except with the ramps set pathetically low.
  
  But anyway, the focus of W&W's narrators are that of jewelers, free from distractions unless they should impeded on the purview of the loupe and then they become catastrophic, which again, is a perspective issue. Can we only focus when we limit perspective? Can we only gain perspective when we let go of focus? I expect my photographer friends can answer this with a well, duh, and thus this diatribe will only serve to further explain why my photos are so terrible.
  
  
• Part of my eye problems is that they don't really work in unison; they sort of flicker back and forth and thus I don't actually have real perspective, only an estimated one, so explained a doctor once. That might explain some things. Maybe I have no business even discussing perspective and should just stick to focus.
  
  

Fire ants consume a gnome

Fire ants consume a gnome.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Paul McCartney, Ram
Pink Floyd, Meddle
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer
Love, False Start
Hüsker Dü, Zen Arcade
Chapstik, Barnburner
Brandon White, Everything Is a Weapon

• I finally joined LinkedIn. Welcome, fellow architects of destiny, to a partnership in progress! The first thing I offer is this picture of fire ants consuming a gnome. Are you an ant or are you a gnome? Let's get a coffee and strategize! Your treat!
  
  
• I'm not a Paul fan, really more of a George guy as things pass, but have always liked "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".  It's where he lets his slobbering dogs off the leash to terrorize the nice people who picnic in the verdant landscaping of his usual songcraft. But I appreciate how much Robert Christgau hates it:
  
  "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is a major annoyance. I tolerated McCartney's crotchets with the Beatles because his mates balanced them out; I enjoyed them mildly on McCartney because their scale was so modest; I enjoy them actively on "Monkberry Moon Delight" because it rocks and on "Smile Away" because it's vulgar and funny. But though nothing else here approaches the willful rhythm shifts and above-it-all silliness of the single, most of the songs are so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices. If you're going to be eccentric, for goodness sake don't be pretentious about it. (Grade - C+)
  - © R. Christgau/Village Voice
  
  Y'all have seen The Ultimate Negative Christgau Review, right? I particularlu like "Expert on tenderoni".
  
  
• Is the first half of "Uncle Albert" a Pink Floyd parody? Probably not, given the timeline, but it sounds like one. I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to a Pink Floyd album, even part-way through. Not out of any particular bias against them. I went through my Floyd phase right after my Beatles one, and didn't as much burn myself on them as move onto Eno and then the rest of my life.
  
  
• To all who recoil at the Alan Parsonry of Bon Iver's "Beth/Rest" - shoo... it's a lone tapestry of sound on an album otherwise stitched together from carpet samples. I'm not offering that as a token of redemption for the record, Bon Iver is a windchime in a doldrum. Maybe he just blew his artistic wad on that Emma chick. I'm just saying that in complaining that "Beth/Rest" is too too, you are addressing the wrong problems with this record.
  
  
• I feel compelled to explain that there was a coffee break between Love and Hüsker Dü, just in case you new LinkedIn readers are concerned over continuity issues that do crop up here from time to time. If I had a crest it would have I feel compelled to explain writ in gold leaf across the bottom and you would defreind me or whatever the term is in LinkedIn. You'd link out. So good thing I don't have one! Welcome aboard!
  
  
  Hüsker Dü, "Never Talking To You Again"

The meat I've eaten

Chicken with a rub of powdered, dried chorizo concocted and executed by my buddy John. I took a bite and was subsequently mad at my entire life up to that moment which was not spent eating this.


"Mr. Wipe Me Down"


The balloon festival was largely a bust due to thunderstorms, but the brave souls of the Raisin' Canes crew fired up with their badass burners.


Some people rock their band auditions.


This was some kind of crosscut pork rib situation of John's. The meat I've eaten off this very tray... Unpictured: laser tag, beer, swimming, couples coming apart at the seams, mishearing about couples coming apart at the seams, bookstore browsing, Hex Bug village building, groceries, withering under the sun's cruelty.

David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
John's George Jones-heavy country mix
The Clash, London Calling
László Kasznnahorkai, War and War

All in all, the weekend was a splendid mélange of the classic and the ridiculous with considerable overlap. It's how I imagine Mr. Wipe Me Down conducts his leisure, or how I would were I he.

a glow coming from my heart area

Is it a kolache or an accurate picture of my heart area?

Yesterday:
Booker T. Jones, The Road from Memphis
Harlem Underground Band, Harlem Underground Band
Raphael Saddiq, Stone Rollin'
Fitz & the Tantrums, Pickin' Up the Pieces
Talib Kweli, Gutter Rainbows
Louie
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

Today:
Mia Doi Todd, Cosmic Ocean Ship
Lynn Drury, Sugar on the Floor
Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stone Flower
Tristeza, Fate Unfolds
Bon Iver, Bon Iver

• I'm sure I said this back when I was a twenty-year-old pretentious thrift-store record enthusiast, but even now at times I wonder why I listen to anything but Booker T. records. His corniest records are still infused with thick honey spun off the nipples of muses. Maya latched right onto the drumming in his remake of "Crazy" when it came on the radio coming home from the pool.
  
  
  Booker T. Jones, "Crazy"
  
  
• Get that cheeba, get through this heat wave. Not like it will make it any better, but it will make it less worser. That is Geroge "Give Me The Night" Benson on guitar up in there. "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba" has a groove so tight, an echo so cavernous, I accidentally had it playing simultaneously from two different sources, out of sync, while putting this post together and I didn't really notice. Or mind when I did.
  
  
  Harlem Underground Band, "Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba"
  
  
• I like his style though find Raphael Saddiq's neo-soul comes off a little thin and dry, but, man, I wish I looked half as good in a suit as he does. I'd settle for looking as good as one of the minor Tantrums.
  
  
  Fitz & the Tantrums, "Money Grabber" = my good times fun jam of the summer.
  
  
• I talked the other day about feeling a phantom ringtone in my leg; today, I've been running around with my phone in my shirt pocket glowing like E.T.'s love and now it is sitting over on the desk, I detect a glow coming from my heart area, only in the corner of my eye, not when I look right at it. Perhaps I should eschew all electronics for the weekend and just stare at the moon, reset my gyroscope with the clock of the tides. Something. There's the balloon festival this weekend; I can look at that.
  
  Tristeza, "Manitas"
  
  
• I finished Zeitoun in the wee hours of today and walked away from it with this: I blow up at work or cast darts through my social circle or do whatever crappy thing I do in the course of my daily humanity and then bounce it up against Zeitoun's dedication and suffering and persistent great attitude and I feel like a worm, so thanks for that Mr. Eggers! Once I'm over that feeling, though, I'm inspired by this story to be a kinder and more patient person.
  
  
  Bon Iver, "Wash."
  
  

The trigger trumps the gun

Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
The Fiery Furnaces, Widow City
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Beware
Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Elvis Perkins in Dearland

• You know what's great about computers? Nothing. I am considering replacing participation in all social media platforms, this one included, with digging holes and yelling into them. I commented on Facebook, I had a dream the other night about twitter and therefore vow to never dream again, which is not such a big loss -  look at what I'm dreaming about - but now I wonder what kind of wormhole I opened up talking shit about dreams about Twitter on Facebook. Did I just make clones of my psyche and force them to bumfight over the sandwich that is my identity? What happens if any of them win?
  
  
• Rhapsody is suddenly down or has been revamped to not work anymore or something so I'm left with the actual CD's on my desk, spinning them around and shining lights on them like a curious savage. Bonnie "Prince" Billy seems forcibly quaint enough and taxonomically well-suited for an afternoon slogging through personality crises. Only because I don't have a New York Dolls CD handy.
  
  
• Speaking of computers and their usefulness, the latest Record Crate is up on the 225 site with information not about computers. Billy Joe Shaver is playing cozy house show-type situations at the Red Dragon Friday and Saturday. Of him I said: The last time I saw Billy Joe Shaver in concert, he gave into an impulse to start flapping his arms like a giant bird on the stage and it made me think how terrifying an avenging angel might appear. Also Teddy's Juke Joint is not closing for good, just for the month of August.
  
  
• Zeitoun is about system failure and how, pretty much, with the right attitude, it won't phase you. I just returned a book at the library and got a coffee from the Wolfgang Puck coffee machine because I had 60¢ in my pocket. On the way there I had my phone in my breast pocket but when my leg brushed against the keys in my jeans, I felt the twinge of the ringer vibration, which, ironically, I don't really feel anymore when my phone actually "rings" in my pocket. The trigger trumps the gun, maybe.
  
  Right by the coffee machine, a group of students were doing a campus tour just as maintenance workers somewhere in the bowels of the place were operating a buzz saw or sander. The students were plugging their ears and the sander was going RRRRRRRRUHHHHHHrrrrooowwww, just like the riff to "Iron Man," killing the people he once saved. Wolfgang Puck just kept laughing! Everything amuses Wolfgang Puck! Wolfgang Puck is without a care in the world! Just like Zeitoun in flood-ravaged New Orleans, though I just got to the part of the book (right after the above "page") when a bunch of men with guns barge in.
  
  
• Walking away from the building out into the oppression of summer - did you know it's a common misconception that we are closer to the sun during summer? It's not about distance; it's about angle - I got a flood of thoughts: I know what the five bullet points thing on my blog is about! I see a parallel between evolution of names of dishes in fine dining and that of pornographic movies!  Elvis Perkins in Dearland resembles the new freecreditreport.com band! It all went downhill quick from there. A block further, I was thinking, It's so hot out. Why did I get coffee? What am I doing? Who am I? Where am I? Is that my phone? No, it's just the key.

like me like process

Prince Jazzbo, Get Tonight Brother
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
Giant Sand, Glum
Richard Buckner, Impasse and Our Blood
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer

• Getting flashbacked by Zeitoun, Dave Eggers' tale of a Syrian man who stayed in New Orleans through Katrina. Even though I didn't go through Katrina, in a sense. I did; in Baton Rouge, our power was out for a week and it was traumatic and Eggers captures that well with his wife and kids driving around town in their van to escape their relatives. Like her, our discomfort was blanched by what we saw on TV happening down the road to people and a place we knew and loved, where the road ended suddenly in floodwater and racists. It's a shock to me that the city has bounced back at all, six years ago this month. I wrote an Oxford American piece on Katrina's effect on Baton Rouge a while back, if yr inclined.
  
  
• There is a great two-part interview with Richard Buckner at No Depression, tracing the dots through his catalog leading up to his new record Our Blood, though I wonder why Impasse and Dents and Shells didn't even merit a mention. Or the one he did with Jon Langford? Granted, they might be the less-sticky of RB's catalog, but Impasse best exposes its own process better than any contemporary rock record that Wilco didn't do. And nerds like me like process. Anyway, RB kept mentioning Glum by Giant Sand which I've never heard and whoa! I'm glad I've never really dug into Giant Sand before because I get to now. I'm gonna listen to one-a-day until I turn into a sandworm.
  
  
• I took Maya by the Wolfgang Puck coffee machine and she was as impressed as I. One of the janitors passed by and said, "They're talking about gettin' rid of that thing." and we shrieked in unison, "NO!" We poked our heads into the other vending machines in the central hall - Coates Hall is more than adequately served! - and there was one with blue books and Scantron sheets and floppy disks. I tried to explain to my computer savvy daughter the nature and purpose of a floppy disk and she looked at me like, Is it something like a butter churn, or a buggy whip? She did gamely ask, "Like a hard drive that you take with you?" proving she got it, but wasn't buying my story. "They aren't even floppy."
  
  "It's all unreal here in real time," says Howe Gelb of Giant Sand.
  
  
  Giant Sand, "Left"
  
  
• We picked up a down-the-street kid for a bike ride last night and went all over the neighborhood, Pied Piper style except with Prince Jazzbo nattering away, until the kids got complainy but hung in there and then at the edge of his own yard, he wiped out hard.
  
  
  Prince Jazzbo, "Mek I Tell You"
  
  
• Stan Brakhage tells a story about Beat poet Christopher Maclaine in his book Film at Wit's End : Eight Avant-garde Filmmakers that Maclaine was staying at his house when early one morning there was a tremendous racket; Maclaine was playing a set of bagpipes and leading the delighted Brakhage children right out the door into the woods. Maclaine made only two films and here is one.
  
  
  Christopher Maclaine, The End (1953)
  
  

a little singe on my gristle

Breaking Bad
Prince Jazzbo, Get Tonight Brother
Staff Benda Belili, Tres Tres Fort
Cargoe, Cargoe (Live in Memphis)
The Orb, Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume 3)

• Cargoe is/was a psychedelic wonder and a labelmate of Big Star on Ardent but managed to be even less appreciated in their time, and no. First heard of it through this excellent interview by Robert Pally in the new Perfect Sound Forever. I found the live Cargoe album of which they speak on the Rhapsody iPhone app but not the web player, which is weird and tedious to report. Anyway, shake off that Monday malaise and feel alright, or give into it (the AC is out in my building) and feel poorly. Cargoe will see you through either.
  
  
  Cargoe, "Feel Alright"
  
  
  Cargoe, "Feelin' Mighty Poorly"
  
  
• Like a superfool, I left the above leftovers in the fridge this morning instead of bringing it for lunch. Seriously, that dinner was so good I was expecting a guard to come escort me to the electric chair afterward. Instead it was just the TV to the couch.
  
  
• Last night's Breaking Bad seemed rather workaday, setting dominoes up to fall episodes later and I was all, C'mon! We accept degeneration and fate! Get on with it! and then Jesse got back to his apartment and I was all, Oh.
  
  
• I was at the bookstore kids section with Maya, myself reading in the Wire about a collection of reggae DJ toasters, people like Prince Jazzbo who just spill forth over the records they play, so I pulled it up on my phone and wondered, why do these stores even exist anymore? I'm glad they do and all, I guess, but really, why? The big Barnes & Noble here in town has played a substantial minor character role in my life since it opened, good and bad, but I never buy anything there because why would I? Why would anyone? Then a woman popped up at the section of kids' bibles next to where I was sitting publicly announcing to herself, "Oh look at this whole section they have here!" jabbering the obvious just like Prince Jazzbo, driving me from my seat. Seems I only like glossolalia through a mediated layer anymore, my psyche sealed up like a sous vide steak getting evenly cooked but never touching the fire. That's why I need a bookstore and a record store and a post office and whatever other place low-simmer public lunacy abuts the quotidian of my process. Gets a little singe on my gristle.
  
  
• In this month's Country Roads you might find my story about Floyd's Morley Marina: lost towns, Henry Ford, party barges, & old people drinkin' all converge in the backest part of Back Brusly. Here is a dog fetching a stick in the water out there
  
  
  
  You might also find my editor Dale's story about a Voodou healing center in New Orleans, my friend Anne's visit to the home of the couple that runs it and my friend Frank rhapsodizing the overlooked oxbow communities in the northern part of the state. If your the finding sort.