the best

The BEST + jalapenos from Louie's.

Betty Wright and the Roots, Betty Wright: The Movie
Of Montreal, the controllersphere
Caribou, Andorra
Liquid Liquid, Liquid Liquid
Los Campesinos!, Hello Sadness
Lucky Dragons, Rara Speaks

Have the best weekend!

do anything

Sukie is on alert for any encroachment on our scene by The Man. Photo by Maya Cook.

Wednesday:
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
The Avett Brothers, Carolina Jubilee
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Yuck, Yuck
The Tallest Man on Earth, The Wild Hunt

Thursday:
Laura Viers, Tumble Bee
Nektar, Retrospective (Deluxe Edition)

• The main reason I love Oasis and Oasis-sourced product is that they take that moment when you are alone in your room or car or shower and put some dumb lyrics together (e.g. if I had a gun/I'd shoot a hole into the sun) and strum on a tennis racket and have your eyes closed and all and turn that into the real song. I like how he can end any couplet with "for you". As if there's any other reason to do anything.
      
• My Zooey Deschanel-heavy post from yesterday was prematurely published and quickly obscured from view, should you be wondering what happened to it. It was an experiment in making this blog do more than it already does, whatever that is.
  
  Edited to add: and now I think I overlaid previous post with this one. That's OK, this one is better.
     
• OK, me and my insomnia cozied up with an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman last night. It was a satire of soap operas from Norman Lear, the guy who basically laid the template for the modern sitcom. MHMH is weird as hell, almost abstract in its stilted sense of drama, its hyper-flattened comedy. And it was on every day in the markets that would carry it. Dig the "Chicken Soup" episode.
  
  
       
• I remember my parents watching it. MHMH is like Beckett and like the Jeffersons all at once, which makes me want to explore how Beckettian the Jeffersons actually was. I mean, what was with George always walking on the English neighbor's back? The maid that never cleans? Was the Jeffersons an anti-colonial reversal thesis with a laugh track and fantastic leisure wear?  Was the Void just outside those sliding patio doors?
      
• Also,  Sherman Hemsley was pretty out there himself. I've posted this before but it's worth rereading how the TV star brought English out-rock band Gong to L.A. to do some sort of project involving installing flying teapots on Sunset Boulevard. Also worth reading for the descriptions of Mr. Jefferson's drug lair.
  
  Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.
  
  Here he is working a dance to prog rock band Nektar into the show. Because he wanted to, again, as if there is any better reason to do anything
  
  

get your hipster doomsday cult on

Photo by Maya Cook

This weekend:
Atlas Sound, Parallax
Korpiklaani, Ukon Wacka
Goatwhore, Eclipse Into Ages of Black

Monday:
Grinderman, Grinderman 2
The Kills, Blood Pressures
The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of The Understatement
Julian Cope, Autogeddon
Faust, Faust IV and Something Dirty

Tuesday:
Composers Quartet, Elliott Carter: String Quartets 1 & 2
WU LYF (World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation), Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

• Monday: I am having an exceptional author day. I saw the final sketch of the cover of this book and started laying groundwork for what will possibly be the next and maybe possibly another. I feel oddly anthemic and triumphant inside, like how this sounds:
  
  
  Faust, "Something Dirty"
       
• This week I'm gonna use photographs Maya took over her weekend of being grounded. I might outsource the whole Visual Arts Department to her.
     
• The Age of Understatement by the Last Shadow Puppets makes me want to stage a bullfight in a record store. Provided one can find a record store. It might be easier to source the bullfight.
  
  
  
  Honestly, I've never really given the Arctic Monkeys the time of day  - mostly because having one dude with first name of Alex and another with the last of Cook means they bung up my ego-Googling  - and know naught of the other band whose member comprise the Last Shadow Puppets, but this record has my number.
      
• Tuesday: Man, everybody on my network is suffering this morning, like the shit planet is in retrograde and spawning off shit comets aimed straight at us. So we'll get covered in shit from outer space! Big whoop. No reason to ruin Facebook over it. Just get your hipster doomsday cult on and revel in it.
  
  
  World United! Lucifer Youth Foundation, "Split It Concrete Like The Colden Sun God"

the world is not so boring

Mì Xào Tôm, Bò Hoặc Gà, Egg Noodle Stir-fried W/ Bean Sprout, Vege, and Beef, Shrimp or Chicken Meat, also known as #100 from Pho Quynh

plus


a medio litro of Mexican Fresca from La Morenita Meat Market

plus


This weather! Earlier today, Maya was outside playing with the hose as yellowed leaves blew off the trees and whipped around her.

is not helping this situation


Articles waiting to be written.

Plus, the world is so interesting, and used to be one where we as a mass entity were nominally interested in it. I was reading these mid-70's articles from the Robert Palmer collection Blues & Chaos while not writing these articles and saw where "Glamour called [Terry Riley's In C] 'the global village's first ritual symphonic piece'" Now, either Glamour is a lot hipper than I give it credit, or the interests up in their high cotton readership have changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Was this profile about hippie/Indian/drone composition next to the multi-page treatment of watches?

But then, one of the things I had to write today was about this


Korpiklaani, "Louhen Yhdeksäs Polka"

So I suppose the world is not so boring now either. This other article involves injecting a turkey with pork fat before you fry it, meaning I have nothing to complain about.

Real! Look!

• I tailgated the eventual trouncing of Western Kentucky by LSU with my friends and editors at the LSU Press and got to see the cover for my book! I wish I could share it, but I'm sworn to secrecy. It looks great, and I'm not just saying that because this makes it one more notch toward being real - it really does look good. I feel safe showing you the page from the Press' Spring 2012 catalog. Real! Look!


• 42-9. I mean, LSU is a nuclear pit bull with laser claws this season and it was the homecoming game and what's a Hilltopper anyway, but man. That's an ass kicking.


• One wishes the marauder mindset from which college football draws its fire would have put the monstrosities at Penn State in their crosshairs. I live in a coach worshipping city, so I know for a fact that Joe Paterno could have made one phone call and had that guy drawn and quartered in the Quad. He could've made a single speech on behalf of the victims, this case and generally, and people would be talking Nobel peace prize. And you know he thought of that, because that's what those guys do, think of things, and he didn't do it.


• It's why people hate the 1% - not because the have power and privilege, it's because they are cowards at using that power when the horrible world calls them to. They can't even call each other out as cowards because there is some .01%-er instructing them not to. I mean, read this story about a girl who is appeared from a cruise ship.


• Bummer city. Onto trivial matters: Jessica Lange's character in American Horror Story is the best thing on TV. The show is trash-good, but she is the smoldering ember on its cigarette. She'd fuck a child molester up. Just saying.

This

The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You
Atlas Sound, Parallax
The Flaming Lips, At War With the Mystics
The Magnetic Fields, House of Tomorrow
Kitchener Waterloo Symphony, Nico Muhly, Jonny Greenwood, Richard Reed Parry: From Here on Out
Zoe Keating, One Cello x 16: Natoma

• This above scene almost blinded me while taking a shot; the sun suddenly lasered through when the flag fluttered, momentarily lifting the shield I took for granted.
       
• This week, I can't stop listening to Atlas Sound. My wife can't stop listening to the Avett Brothers. I suspect this is how Friday Night Lights was conceived.
     
• This unreleased documentary on the Fall is worth your hip priest eyeballin'.
     
  
  Unreleased documentary on the Fall.
      
• This airing of my unpopular opinions about the Beach Boys comprises most of this week's Record Crate for 225 Magazine. Also included: the Decemberists and Florence + the Machine, both of whom I do like.
       
• This day's highlight was a PR agent from England emailing for an advanced copy of my book! No such thing exists, though another email says the proofs are forthcoming and another email indicates they might want another! Email! Nice work!

"I got wild mushrooms growin' in my yard"

"I got wild mushrooms growin' in my yard"


Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, Mainstream
The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops
Papa M: November 18, 2009 Knitting Factory (via NYCTaper)
Morton Subotnick, Volume 2: Electronic Works
Roedelius, Geschenk des Augenblicks (ht Pretty Goes With Pretty)

• I actually don't - those are from a neighbor's yard this morning - but it reminded me of the best line (caption above) from the greatest cocaine song of all time.
  
  
  Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, "My Bag"
       
• The fire escape open window led me here. One of the first album reviews I ever wrote for outsideleft was for a Blue Nile record, to which I would link but it appears we've run behind on our hosting bill. Here it is at the Wayback Machine.
  
  Best line: See, we in that pre-alternative era had to get excited about something, otherwise Mario Van Peebles would've lobbied congress to have the entire nation soundtracked with fat drum machines and sub-Cameo synth washes.
  
  
  The Blue Nile, "From Rags to Riches"
  
  Best line: "I write a new book everyday, the love theme for the wilderness."
  Note to self: write a book called "The Love Theme for the Wilderness"
        
• But speaking of hosting and vanished and "the first" and notes to self, I found my first website on the Wayback Machine. Dig this great animations I made for the "life" section.
  
  
  
  There are no best lines here. This general statement is pretty precious. This 1996 artist statement is better than I remember it being, but like most artist statements, doesn't say much. My mid-1990's was all about making statements. Evidently I was into Ed Paschke back then, but I couldn't remember who that is until I looked him up. I like how I left convenient blank spots for future interests.
         
• I got pulled into a friend's class to talk about writing artist statements, which turned into my general lecture about writing about art, which involves an onion/layers-of-the-earth diagram and some dramatic scribbling, but here is the general advice on artist statements:
       
  Say what your art is about. You want your art to do all the talking, and unfortunately, it doesn't. Either your art isn't good enough, or the viewers aren't good enough, or the setting isn't good enough, or some combination of factors keeps your art from generating a pearl of understanding in the viewer's mind, so you provide an artist statement. You want that statement to cleanly and most expediently bridge that gap that exists between your art and the viewing of that art. If you say you don't know what your art is about, you are full of shit; you just don't want to say what your art is about, or conversely, your art might not be about much, which puts you in a tough position. But, if your art is about something, if there is a reason you made it, say that.
     
  If your art is really all about -isms and theory, say that, but honestly, I doubt that it is. So, then, what is it really about? Say that. And if possible, make it funny. People like things that are funny.