power pop language

Black Diamond

William Gibson, Neuromancer
No Reservations Holiday Special
Stephen King's Bag of Bones
David Sandström Overdrive, Pigs Lose
P.J. Harvey, Let England Shake
Guided By Voices, Bee Thousand

• Maya's band Black Diamond plays twice this weekend, Sat. night at the Manship Theatre and Sunday afternoon at Brew-Ha-Ha.
     
• I just had a publicity planning meeting about Louisiana Saturday Night where we began mapping out my forthcoming omnipresence on the Louisiana music book talking circuit. If you have an event you'd like me to be at hawking my wares, let me know.
    
• Late last night, I was reading Neuromancer with the No Reservations holiday special going on in the background, and while I'll confess getting easily lost in Gibson's classic of perceptive dissonance,  it still made a lot more sense than whatever was going on with Bourdain over there on the TV. I'm guessing it was a post-modern take on the old narrative holiday special, but I dunno, more mama's cookin', less drama lookin'. Or something.  The pooping Santa thing was cool until it became to a cartoon, then it lost me. Pooping Santa is interesting enough on it's own.
      
• Also, it felt like Bag of Bones was on for hours and hours, getting more and more ridiculous, but in a great terrible TV way. At 1:43 AM, you want to look over see Pierce Brosnan lumber around pretending to cry in the rain.
      
• I've resisted until now, but yeah, that new P.J. Harvey record is pretty special. Today, though, belongs to David Sandström Overdrive, for they are totally speaking my power pop language. I've never heard of him or them either.
  
  
  David Sandström Overdrive, "Not a Good Boy Now"

minus the Univac

Katie Naquin, "Orange as Hippos". Oil on canvas, on display at LSU's Middleton Library.
See more of her work at WallsCanTalkGalley.com.

Friday:
New Order, "Blue Monday" (12" Mix)
Can, Tago Mago
Various Artists, Tackhead Sound Crash Slash and Mix by Adrian Sherwood
Ruts D.C. vs. Zion Train, Rhythm Collision Vol. 1
Ghost, Opus Eponymous
Kvelertak, Kvelertak
Sleep, Jerusalem

Saturday: 
Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition at Chelsea's Cafe, Baton Rouge, LA


Sunday: 
Roberto Bolaño, The Third Reich

Monday:
Songs: Ohia, Axxess & Ace and The LionessPhosphorescent, Here's To Taking it EasySol Invictus, Black Europe
Henry Brant, Wesleyan Gamelan, and others, Meteor Farm
Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies, The American Metaphysical Circus
Jimbo Mathus, Knockdown South

• According to the Blogger stats, we've hit 125K page views on this little blog. Thanks!
     
• I'm not really sure how to describe Henry Brant's Meteor Farm. It sounds like a live dress rehearsal of Glee, a phalanx of beplumed native drummers, a holiday jazz band concert, and a Univac going to town on interstellar gas cloud data all happening on the same stage, each rotating through their parts like serves in volleyball, all muttering "I got it" when the ball comes back over the net. Does that help?
  
  I just found some liner notes that pretty much line up with my description, minus the Univac. Brant's music as I understand it, is very much about sounds' position  in space. I'm picturing all these groups on a massive stage with a harried stage director, clipboard in sweaty palm just trying to keep everything moving.
  
  Whatever is going on, it has the massive the-earth-is-moving consciousness about it that I appreciate from the large-scale activities of the avant-garde composers. I suppose this is the thrill of any symphony or symphonic pop configuration, but when guys like Brant pull things apart and leave them all stretched out under the proscenium arch is when things really click in my brain. Section 12, when it all sounds like it's about to be run over by a train, is a dazzling constellation of anxiety.
     
• Jimbo Mathus's cosmic crew might be the best bar band I've ever seen, in a meta-bar band way, or even maybe in a meta-meta-bar band that circles around to just being a great bar band and finding the material to suit (and Nudie suit) the context. I was gonna regret not shooting a video but thankfully some kind obsessive did it for me and us, one and all. My world blogs itself!
  
  
  Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition, "Tell It to the Judge"
      
• See, if I had his band, or his position to have a similar band or at least the wherewithal to wear a Nudie suit on occasion, I'd want to do songs like this.
  
  
  Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies, "Nightmare Train"
     
• and talk about avant-garde composers between the songs, and nobody wants that.  It's probably best that this is my venue.
  
  125,000 idle blog clicks can't be wrong!

livewire voodoo

Digital screen in the new plaza under construction in downtown Baton Rouge. I kinda hope it stays like this.

William Gibson, Neuromancer
Premiata Forneria Marconi, Storia Di Un Minuto
Brainticket, Celestial Ocean
John Cage, Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake
Brad Mehidau, Places
The Bad Plus, Never Stop
Ornette Coleman, The Complete Science Fictions Sessions

• Brainticket is the only ticket you need.
  
  
  Brainticket, "Era of Technology"
     
• I'd like to think there are layers of techno-irony involved reading a digital copy of Neuromancer checked out from the library on the iPad while riding the bus home, but really it seems second nature to me. For Case, the protagonist in William Gibson's novel which introduced the word cyberspace in its first chapter, the pains of going back to analog attack him in his dreams.
  
  But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach a console that wasn't there.
     
• I don't talk about my day job much because here's why: I've been watching this data replication job fail over and over, each time for one small little glitch that happens ten minutes into the process and so you have to re start it. It's like teaching someone to ride a bike except when they fall or get scared, you have to go buy a new bike.
  
  Oh, wait, it worked! Maybe I just needed to channel my frustrations into this screen instead of that one. Now to see if I can make the schedule work. It didn't.
  
  Again, this is why I don't talk much about my day job.
    
• It's screen separation anxiety. Once when my co-teacher was giving our class on the virtues of being unplugged, I basically had to sit on my hands to not check Facebook or email on my phone while he was talking.
     
• That is one of the many things to look forward to on our week in Ireland over the holidays, where I suspect the WiFi will be as spotty as the Guinness is foamy and there are castles and leprechauns and I might be able to wander a dreamland of something besides electric sheep for a bit.
  
  
  
  Or, because I'm like this...
  
  
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smarter

More fireworks

The Roots, undun
The Gorrilaz, The Singles Collection 2001-2011
Why?, Eskimo Snow
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer
William Brittelle, Television Landscape
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Advance Base Battery Life
Todd Reynolds, Outerborough

• My favorite non-profit label New Amsterdam is having a fundraiser where each day they are allowing temporary free downloads of selected releases. Today's is two discs by the hyper-post-culture-processor William Brittelle who you should get to know. Brittelle's music is made out of all the music you like except this time it's smarter
  
  
  William Brittelle, "Halcyon Days"
  
  Give 'til it hurts, people.
   
• The new Roots album is sorta kinda about Sufjan Stevens. I'm a fan of both, and it's a good moody record regardless of how you feel about either.
    
• I'm kicking around the idea of a best of 2011 list even though I really didn't exactly review a lot of music this year, but when/if I do, the Eleanor Friedberger record will be on it.
  
  
  Eleanor Friedberger, "Inn of the Seventh Ray"
     
• As will be at least one thing from New Amsterdam, who by the way did not in any way solicit this announcement by doing anything but putting out cool music. I just really like what they do and how they do it.
  
  
  Todd Reynolds performs "Outerborough" live at the Metro Gallery on the Contemporary Museum's Mobtown Modern Music Series. September 16, 2009. Video by Guy Werner.

Shonna Tucker has left Drive-By Truckers

My favorite coffee cup, as requested by Traci Jean, the person who got us into Drive-By Truckers in the first place. Jerri's mom gave it to be because it was the one I always picked when we went out to their farm. It's from when she lived in Germany in the 70's - it has "W - GERMANY" embossed on the bottom.

Lou Reed, Legendary Hearts
The Black Keys, Brothers
Drive By Truckers, The Big To-Do
The Cars, Candy-O

Shonna Tucker has left Drive-By Truckers as their bassist and feminizing influence, and it would be incredibly tacky to suppose that the boys were all now wondering if they could, er, coax a certain churchboy-singin' guitar player back in the band now, so don't even go there. I'm embarrassed you even brought it up.

I got to go up to the green room at Tipitina's on the last night of the Dirt Beneath tour while Jason Isbell spent (I think) his last night as a Trucker loading the bus. He said, "Oh yeah, they're all up there." This was before there was any announcement about him and Shonna splitting up and his leaving the band. I thought it was weird that he was downstairs when I got up there. Patterson had done a blurb for my first book so I wanted to give him a copy, which was my in.  Shonna invited me to do a shot of Jack with her and the band and I managed to not spazz out. Anyway, Shonna is a class act, and I look forward to what she's got coming up next.


Sweet Soul Cookin' with Shonna Tucker. I would watch her rub chicken grease on bass strings on a regular basis.


Drive-By Truckers, "The Fourth Night of My Drinking"

In case you've forgotten, The Big To-Do is a motherfucker of a record.

So yes. No point in beating one's breast over a band lineup change. She kept that job for eight years which is a long time, almost as long as I've had that coffee cup. Things break, go missing, you get a new vessel and fill that one up next. Cheers!

flare out across the room

Slim Harpo, Live in Concert
Human Switchboard, Who's Landing in my Hangar? Anthology 1977-1984
The Quadrajets, Alabama Hip Shake
Felt, Poem of the River
The Beatles, Rob's mixtape of collected Fan Club Christmas singles
Belle and Sebastian, The BBC Sessions
Dean & Britta, The 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

• Rainy gray December with mellow English pop going on the hi-fi reminds me of sitting in the living room of my friend's apartment playing Scrabble with him and his trainwreck girlfriend. Everyone involved was in pretty sorry shape and fixing to get worse, a tragicomedy punctuated by glows that flare out across the room of memory like Christmas lights that have yet to burn out on the string.


• How has Belle & Sebastian not done a Christmas record? Like a resigned, vaguely bitter one with songs about Marks & Spencer's clerks cleaning up the cafe after the final holiday rush, popping out for a drink, just one before catching the train, which turns into an awkward hungover Christmas morning. There are no trains running, the shops are all closed and both are missing the presents and feast at mum's, instead sharing the last teabag in the cupboard. There, that's a start. They can call it "Gifts of the Magi" if they like.


• This brief wave of bullshit holiday melancholy is sponsored by a lingering sinus infection, pathetic fallacy, and a innate fear of success. Really, everything is gangbusters up in here. We are busting up a gang as I type this.


• Rob's compiling this mix of Beatles Christmas fan club singles is an act of mesmerizing devotion. I love how the tunes get weirder as they got weirder.


• The secret to Dean Wareham's particular musical genius is that he can ride the lowest wave for longer than anybody and and it never crests and suddenly picks up just a touch and you shake awake and go "I'm surfing! I'm doing it!" and you are for just a second and then you get deposited on the sand on your wetsuit, the empty beach staring right at you.

a robot's fart

We went to see the Christmas lights get turned on downtown and suddenly it sounded like the parking garage was under siege. Fireworks! We scrambled to the roof to watch them explode up close and personal. The best part was how the boom echoed off the surrounding buildings, each blast dissipating into what Maya and her friend accurately described as "a robot's fart".

Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
John Fahey & His Orchestra, Of Rivers and Religion
The Incredible String Band, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and Wee Tam
Roberto Bolaño, The Third Reich

I heard Incredible String Band on KLSU last night piloting the darkness one must brave to come home from Teddy's and it reminded me what having a late-night college radio show is about. I wanted to ring up DJ FML and request Pearls Before Swine but she was doing fine on her own, plus, driving. I took DJ FML's lead and let the merry pranksters soundtrack the Albertson's. It was degrees less jarring than the kid screaming NOOOOO over the anonymous R&B holiday Muzak.


The Incredible String Band, "A Very Cellular Song"

Last night at Teddy's, my buddy Clarke and I were nursing a Jack and Coke setup in a back corner booth as Larry Garner was interspersing extended, encyclopedic blues/funk workouts with stories about how integration put him in contact with hippie girls and LSD. Teddy has a million blinking, shimmering competitors for one's attention going on in the place. Clarke asked if I could see the band where I was sitting and I said that I could see that one flat screen recasting the stage like a personal size Jumbotron. He was quick to point out that it was playing actually a DVD of a different show recorded there.

I said this level of stimulus, of congenial mayhem was about as awesome as it could get, when suddenly Teddy's wife appeared passing around a tray of cupcakes.



For instance, wrap your brain around Granny dancing with Mr. Peyton who was sporting an electric mohawk for the evening. I'm not sure how old either are exactly, but they are up there. Larry, performing in the background, who himself is almost 60, said Mr. Peyton was the neighborhood barber when he was a kid.

I put both of these things on Facebook and wondered whether it is even worth blogging further, which is the most precious wonder one can transmit. But it all is precious. Facebook is like taking core samples to see what might have lived down in the ice; the long form is strapping on mukluks and consorting with the Emperor penguins.


Piece of John Fahey's "Song" from Of Rivers and Religion

It's what late night radio shows are for - the extended traipse through a thing that interested you, to give it more than a fleeting glance. No one is listening, or rather if they are, they are along for the ride, so you can go where you truly must. The DJ went from the Incredibles' alchemist lair to the Kingston Trio and the Mamas and the Papas and on through familiar ground, which works too. No matter how flat the world seems, there are still valleys and peaks and chasms in which to stare. Or massive explosions, staged for nothing more than to make fart noises in their passing.

PS: William Bowers once killed me in an anecdote he wrote for the Oxford American, saying he was left standing there like "a blinking, farting robot" - one of many things that guy wrote that left me in a similar state. Whatever happened to that guy?

You need to read his "All We Read Are Freaks" if you haven't, which I had in my head was all about Jane Austen, which would tie this up nicely, but it's about Emily Dickinson. Close enough.