a world of sweet people and smiling meat

As witnessed at the LSU vs. Auburn tailgate: Never has anyone seemed so happy to be let out of a


Cajun Microwave - sort of a BBQ coffin with a layer of coals on the bottom and top and a whole pig in the center - and


Never has anyone ever looked so serious wearing a fox hat and some kind of arm sock while stealing a cookie, and


I don't even know who this lady is but when I commented that she was the best put-together gal at tailgating, her husband said "Take her picture, and be sure to get the rings!" Evidently this woman elicits this reaction a lot; a photographer from the newspaper came across her last week and put her picture in the Style section, but


I do know these people - the much ballyhooed champion BBQ-er John and his daughter Grace - appearing across the pit.

You wanna think you live in a world of sweet people and smiling meat and they go lead a second line through Rebecca's old neighborhood in the drunken dark because she elicited that kind of outpouring and Maya is down the street carving pumpkins and Jerri had me put on that Gram Parsons tribute record where the Pretenders do "She" and Cryssie Hynde just sang "Hallelujah" as the dusk streamed in gray, white and green like the best put-together gal at the party and then she did it again, and you do.

R.I.P. Rebecca Breeden

Rebecca Breeden as the 2004 Spanish Town Mardi Gras Queen

One of my first assignments was covering a blues jam at a club in an unfamiliar part of town. I was hopelessly green, not really knowing how to capture a story or what to do with it should one fall in my lap. Looking around the room for insight, I saw a young woman with a little notebook just like mine. Rebecca Breeden had been working at the newspaper for a while on the entertainment beat, and we leaned in over our notes to see what we could collectively glean of the situation. She knew some people; I knew some people. We made some sense of the thing. It was the first time I felt like I had any business doing what I do.

What I learned from Rebecca that day, and continued to learn from her over the years, is that we are always green; all situations are new territory and the only way to capture those situations is to have eyes and ears open and mind ready to process. My every encounter with Rebecca as a colleague and as a friend further pressed that idea into me. She often edited my pieces at 225 and helped me navigate the waters of a professional writing environment. As a reporter, she was vigorously curious, especially about the gray areas where religion and politics overlap. She was open to both, and equally suspicious of both, and understood that they are mortar and brick to understanding this region. Even when I didn't agree with her, I found her insight and her manner of approaching things to be inspiring. She was the calmest of jackhammers.

Cancer is a terrible way for someone who was the exact opposite of a cancer on society to go. I'm thankful that I got to work with such an individual. I'll miss her wry smile and that big ol' Loretta Lynn hairdo of hers. I'll miss the openness she exhibited to me and everyone she met. I'll miss the country twang that buttered everything she said.  I'll miss every visit to that little house on Bungalow. I'll miss her.

---

Edited to add: Sandor Gulyas unearthed a picture Teddy Johnson (of Teddy's Juke Joint)  took of Rebecca and me covering the blues jam at the Buddy Stewart Rhythm Museum. Culture journalism in action, circa 2006. Here's the piece I wrote on it.

birdmen are essential

The new statue of Shaquille O'Neal on campus. I wish birds would line up on that section of the backboard.


Wednesday:
Richard Swift, Walt Wolfman [His records are like Oreo's: I could eat them all day and forget I ate anything]
Is Tropical, South Pacific [These bands sound like the presets on the Casios that used be on display department stores, or that they think Joy Division oughta be joyous if they are gonna call themselves that]
The dB's, The Sound of Music and "Revolution of the Mind" [#JangleWallStreet]
Radio Birdman, The Essential Radio Birdman [As you will see below, birdmen are essential]
Blue Öyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation [My favorite band from 5th grade. I forgot Patti Smith did stuff with them]
The Chesterfield Kings, The Mindbending Sounds of the Chesterfield Kings

Thursday:
Thomas and the People, Beneath the Trees [streaming from their site; kinda like DMB without the bad DMB parts]
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gimme Back My Bullets [Their plane crashed on the way to Baton Rouge 34 years ago today. The linked article contends that in 1977, Aerosmith was going to rent the same plane and crew and thought they weren't up to their standards.]
Tom Waits, Real Gone [After years of mythos-eating devotion, I now generally like everything about Tom Waits except listening to his records, but I still do it. Why isn't his forthcoming one Bad as Me growling away on NPR Music like it should be?]
Tedechi Trucks Band, Revelator [recommended by McSweeney's]

• Congrats to DownBeat editor Aaron Cohen on the publication of his 33 1/3 book on Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace! Can't wait to read it. Thanks for my brief appearances in DownBeat and the Believer, I sometimes get stuff in the mail addressed like this:
  
  
  I may co-opt this for my business card. Alex V. Cook: freelance downbeat believer
     
• Once upon a time, television was an arena in which fearsome beauty was enacted.
  
  
  Keep watching; via the Rumpus. Lynda Carter + KISS + F E A T H E R S !
     
• Like I remember Boy George guest-starring on the A-Team, and the Village People performing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Where did we go wrong as a culture? Reagan? It's not like we traded in spectacle for taste.
     
• I forgot all about Radio Birdman, Australia's first punk rock band, until I saw KISS in their avian finery up there. You did watch that video, right? I think Radio Birdman formed in the holding cell of the first prison colony transport schooner. They are like Blue Öyster Cult except more like poisoned blue öysters.
  
  
  Radio Birdman, "Descent into the Maelstrom"
      
• Last week when I saw Blitzen Trapper, I commented to a friend that they were knockin' on the door of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and should have just broken into a couple bars of "Sweet Home Alabama" like it seemed they wanted to mid-extended-ramble-jams. Think how thrilled everyone would have been. I feel that way when bands complain about hecklers yelling "Play 'Freebird'"; the complaint being a more pervasive cliche than the incident. Play it, then. Shut everybody up. Put away all the baggage you might have and "Freebird" is still a pretty great song.

a V of geese

OK, a little more than blue skies from now on.


Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road [see below]
Shelby Lynne, Revelation Road [a juicy, sour lollipop with a dry chunk of raw sugar in the middle]
Dire Straits, Love Over Gold [Took sampling 8 Mark Knopfler solo albums to get to this and I still wish it was "Sultans of Swing" instead] and Brothers in Arms [also surprised how it holds up]
Sondre Lerche, Don't Be Shallow and Sondre Lerche [here's lookin' at you, Offbeat deadline]
Fred Neil, Rhino Hi-Five: Fred Neil [Thanks, Clarke! I'm never prepared for how deep Fred Neil's voice is]
Bobby Charles, Bobby Charles
Tony Joe White, Rhino Hi-Five: Tony Joe White
Sister Gertrude Morgan, Let's Make a Record
The Meters, Struttin'

• Revolutionary Road took me forever to read only because you can run yourself through the wringer only so quickly, not rushing each snapping bone or squashed organ, not hurrying the deflated emotional pancake of a person this book will make of you. It started out a marital horror story, the kind where you yell at the screen "No! don't go there! Just say she was good in the play! Don't try to fix anything!" to become a vigil over a heart monitor or a bomb, either way one that periodically stops beeping and you are a little relieved and then it it starts beating faster and faster until you can do nothing but watch the clock run out on love. Devastating, ruthless and, in that, beautiful.
  (x-posted at Goodreads)
  
  
• My book has a cover! Or a cover is being floated down the editorial ice floe, a visceral, Egglestonian interior shot of Teddy's Juke Joint by my buddy Frank McMains. We bat our mutual admiration back and forth like an air hockey puck.  I believe that's how this business works, but really, Frank is not only talented as hell, he's a real mensch for doing this.
   
• The book also has a very perfunctory website LouisianaSaturdayNight.com, the spiffing up of which should be my next project.
     
• Speaking of projects, I just sent off 5,000 words of a thing that has been weighing on my conscience because what I originally proposed was just not working. Once I stepped back and said how would I do this, as if someone else was every really involved, it fell together like a V of geese, migrating off the horizon.
    
• ESPN-U taped my afternoon class for something so if somewhere you see a guy with hair falling somewhere between Yahoo Serious and Jimmy Swaggart on some sports/education backchannel it might be me. I've grown tired of the mental patient buzz cut and, thanks to a lovely gift from my lovely wife, am experimenting with product.

facing evil; conquering evil

Friday:
Nirvana, Nevermind  [Holds up on repeted listens 20 years later]
XTC, Black Sea and Skylarking[Needed to hear "Living Through Another Cuba" after hearing New Orleans is getting flights to Cuba]
The Twilight Singers, Dynamite Steps [Louche act]
Spoon, Transference [Ever notice how much Spoon sounds like Billy Joel?]


Saturday:
Black Diamond at the St. George Fair [So proud]
Smoke Fairies, Blitzen Trapper, and Dawes at the Manship Theatre [Great show]
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road [This book is going to kill me]

Sunday:
Terry Riley, You're Nogood [Brilliant and even hilarious if you are the precise kind of minimalism dork I am]
Parliament, Chocolate City [How have I never listened to this album before?]
Donald Byrd, Electric Byrd  [Kinda like  BULLFIGHTERS IN SPACE! at points]
Björk, Biophilia [Maya's new discovery + a friend of mine made me want to kill him when he detailed hanging out with Björk and her family over memorial Day weekend.]



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There are worse people with whom one could spend a weekend. Maya facing evil at Super Science Saturday; our grand walking tour from Canal Place to Euclid Records and back (New Orleans. this weather makes me fall for you all over again even though you still smoke); addressing the unknown (stuffed crab legs) at Kim Anh Noodle House; pre-flight ritual, dipping things in chemicals; Black Diamond playing their debut at the St. George Fair (videos up at their Facebook page); conquering evil

rock 'n' roll transference dreams

This Google Image search page of Adele is Warhol hypnotic. It's like she can see me rolling in something far deeper than I realize.

Work of Art: The Next Great Artist
The Cure, Seventeen Seconds
Clinic, Bubblegum
Electrelane, Axes
Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest
Tame Impala, InnerSpeaker

• My daughter's band Black Diamond is playing their debut show at the St. George Fair as part of the Baton Rouge Music Studios showcase on Saturday, Oct. 15 from 2-5pm. I will be the one upfront with the camera and the rock 'n' roll transference dreams coming true.
  
  
  4/5 of Black Diamond. The singer escaped before the photoshoot. Their setlist is the Beatles, "Let it Be", Adele's "Someone Like You" and the Cure's "Friday I'm in Love."
     
• This week's Record Crate for 225: DJ Shadow, Blitzen Trapper, Dawes, Bettye Lavette, John Pizzarelli.
     
• I am an unabashed fan of the Cure's "A Forest." Into the trees, y'all! I wish to shout to my compatriots in Cure-dom. So simple. I could listen to an hour-long loop of it, just let it build and build with more and more echo until there's nothing but grey.
  
  
  The Cure, "A Forest"
   
• You forget entirely about a thing you for a moment loved and then the circumstances of the day conjures it. E.g., Electrelane.
  
  
  Electrelane, "These Pockets are People"
  
  
• Work of Art Season 2, ep. 1 recap: The cast is good, the art wasn't bad, though Bayete the video artist missed a great opportunity in remaking this piece of thrift store art with his face  under all that hair. He couldn't just straight-faced read from the Preppy Handbook or a society column of the New York Times or a Sarah Palin speech and won.
  
  
  
  Though it only got cursory presentation on the program, I thought Kymia's transformation sculpture was my favorite. It is the simple move that professional ego politicians like the Sucklord tend to miss. Jazz-Minh's painting was good too, plus she gets bonus points for the craziest name. Hers should have won, really; it was the only piece that stood on its own without understanding that it had an origin in thrift store art, but maybe because she ventured too far form the original work. It was the only one of this round that I'd actually like to own.
  
  The Keith Haring dude's losing piece wasn't all that bad, though I wanted him to weave brightly colored string and things into the original Chinese restaurant bas-relief thing he got. Or rather, I wanted to. 

cold dill pickles

They have cold dill pickles at Sweet's Outdoor Grill. I was tempted by the frozen pickle juice shot, but settled for sopping up pulled pork juice with a piece of white bread.

Jack Oblivian, Rat City
American Death Ray, Welcome to the Strange and Erotic World of the American Death Ray
Viva L'American Death Ray Music, Behold! A Pale Horse
Frank Black, The Cult of Ray


Jack Oblivian, "Rat City"

• I think Rat City is really great. Jack Oblivian makes the music a juvenile delinquent turned community college professor makes when they pick up that guitar in the garage again. It's the kind of music that makes me want to pretend to be a rock star so I will.
       
• I would be a rock star like Nicholas Ray of American Death Ray and Viva L'American Death Ray Music and have a bunch of trash art projects under similar but different variations of my own name.
   
• I would use the cold dill pickles sign for the front cover of every record, releasing no less than three a year. In very limited quantities on obscure labels. Play no shows. It would be so great.
     
• I would be taxonomically severe with the band/album names. "The Alex V. Cook Experience Presents the Sounds of the Alex V. Cook Experience" or "Alex V. Cook, Ltd. Limited Alex V. Cook Recordings" printed in very small block print on the back would be the only outwardly distinguishable demarcations between the projects. They would be widely stylistically divergent.
     
• I wouldn't mind being Frank Black either. He once sang in a song: I wanna be a singer like a Lou Reed, but I think I'd rather be a singer like a Frank Black being a singer like a Lou Reed than be a Lou Reed directly. As a member of Alex V. Cook Unlimited II, appearing on Greatest Hits of Alex V. Cook Unlimited II, Vol. 1.
     

Viva L'American Death Ray Music, "Out of the Pink"