My new job

iPad photo of "Navy Recruiting Station, Post Office - Butte, Montana" from the library's copy of Robert Frank's The Americans

Tuesday:
Awake
Bill Janovitz, The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street
Chelsea Wolfe, Apokalypsis
Sunn 0))), Monoliths and Dimensions
Alice Coltrane, Ptah the El Daoud
The Catamites, Ateliers Claus, Bruxelles - 11 February 2012
Lost Bayou Ramblers, Mammoth Waltz
Lonely Lonely Knights, The Stupid Tape
Hurray for the Riff Raff, Look Out Mama

Wednesday:
Punch Brothers covering the Cars' "Just What I Needed"
X, Los Angeles
Black Flag, Slip It In
Death, Symbolic
Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paradiso UFO, Absolute Freak Out (Zap Your Mind!)
It's a Beautiful Day, It's a Beautiful Day
Robert Frank, The Americans


Thursday:
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St.
The Band, Live at Watkin's Glen

RIP Levon Helm

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It's been a busy three days. I'm  reading the 33 1/3 book on Exile on Main Street and listening to the actual album and  flipping through the the library's copy of Robert Frank's The Americans. Frank is the photographer of that album's album cover, which is a photograph of other photographs. It's a heady trio to synthesize, but that's not the busy part.

The busy part is changing jobs, pursuing paperwork, managing the million little internal and external transitions. Kinda like how a flight is a million little corrections, or how walking is the constant prevention from falling. It's a happy takeoff and landing, no fleeing away from anything but striding toward something. My new job title will be the Creative Manager for LSU Student Media, helping steer that fine institution into the open seas of digital media and how future journalists of America will navigate said waters.

I realize I mixed transportation metaphors. It's interesting how personal growth is often described as flight, where professional growth plays out in nautical terms.

I don't talk about my day job much on the blog, but I expect that will change some; converging the writing and programming and media sides of my deal is partly what this job is about, so I'm thankful to have the opportunity to do so.



iPad photo of "Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana" from the library's copy of Robert Frank's The Americans

lightbulb clicking on

Paper vs. iPad: Who is the more orange? Maya is all about origami now, a process that will unfold before you in reverse.

Monday:
Bill Janovitz, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St.
Black Dice, Mr. ImpossibleGonjasufi + Humansuit "Lawnmower Man" produced by Flying Lotus. 
Tickley Feather, Tickley Feather
Prince Rama, Utopia = No Reason
LA Vampires & Zola Jesus, LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus
Black Dice, Beaches & Canyons

I bought the Kindle 33 1/3 book on Exile on Main St. for $.99 as part of the other day's Kindle Daily Deal. I also bought the one about Highway 61 Revisited. Scoff at coupon schemes and Amazon if you must - I do - but I did actually pay money for digital content his weekend, even if it wasn't that much money. I don't buy anything but coffee and sandwiches if I can get away with it. Anyhoo, Exile on Main St. is pretty good at 8% of the way in. The first lightbulb clicking on was that the way they recorded "Stray Cat Blues" was inspired by Velvet Underground's "Heroin". You forget that artists live on a timeline and that things overlap outside of history's tidy compartmentalizing.


Taking form.

I took the resident District 12 tribute to go see Hunger Games. We both liked it albeit agreeing that they must have been trying to kill off the tributes with boredom and anxiety for the first hour. Also, I had to wonder if Donald Sutherland believed that children were actually being killed in the arena. Like, did he approach an assistant director and volunteer to kill one himself and a gaffer had to discretely direct his attentions elsewhere as he grumbled "Keifer gets to kill people in his show...". It's grand fun and not at all karmically-risky to speculate on the delusions of the aged.


Compartmentalizing. Also: sunbleached. Origami is winning the battle for orange-ness.

On that note, happy 50th birthday, Ian MacKaye! I interviewed him back in 2008 for the Believer, partially available here. He was a little worn out from doing two phone interviews just before I called, but took a minute to walk around the block and came back like a champ. Music is no joke, people.

Today's whole playlist has been like a spa treatment on the rim of a black hole. Prince Rama will knock yr charkrahs right in line. Single mom lo-fi project Tickley Feather might've made me mist up a little with desperate sweetness. I want all slapdash album covers in the future to look like that in the "Lawnmower Man" video. Zola Jesus is the Internet's imaginary spooky college girlfriend, giving You the Listener a moment of her time. I love the new Black Dice album, Mr. Impossible. I might have once considered their Beaches & Canyons my favorite record. I wrote a long piece about them once at good old outsideleft. I just checked and I'm still listed as music editor and my login still works; I might just have to write something over there soon. I might have done or will do a lot of things in this paragraph. Dance with the one that brung ya.


My friend Bill giving Maya an origami lesson up at Highland Coffees. 

Actual boudin progress

Boudin link from the Best Stop in Scott, LA, on the day NPR reported that the tiny burg has been voted "Boudin Capital of the World" while mispronouncing it, putting the emphasis on the second syllable. A minor quibble, really, flattened by the fact that the gossiping clerks were unaware of their new designation and politely unimpressed when I brought it up. I love that Louisiana doesn't care much, because it has stuff like this.



I had a great time talking swamp pop with Johnnie Allan, one of the greats of the genre, which also is a manifestation of Louisiana's curious embrace of its deal. This took place at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival, so much fun I forgot to take pictures or tweet it or anything. It was like living in the real world.



Sales on Louisiana Saturday Night are going well, and progress is forthcoming on Gas Station Boudin. Actual boudin progress. The fries above, looking stunning on a vintage formica counter, are from Dearman's, seller of Baton Rouge's best hamburger, below.



As for the strawberry malt, there is none more pink. I also listened to a bunch of Megadeth so I could later discuss it with dudes.

Drunken Fish's House Special Vegetarian Soup Bowl

It was fun watching my Indian grad students try to use chopsticks. I went for Drunken Fish's House Special Vegetarian Soup Bowl: broccoli, zucchini, egglplants, carrots, napa cabbage, and tofu served with clear noodles. A culinarily and architecturally significant dish possessing a sobriety rendered risky when one plops in too much sriracha, as one might do, if one is, say, showing off for one's grad students or something.  One of them told me that Chinese food made by Indian people is the best and suddenly it did sound like the best idea. She said Bombay to Beijing in Sugarland, TX is her favorite and they eat there when they carpool out that way every month to hit up the cheap Indian supermarkets. All that sounds like a good idea. Better than they deemed "eating with sticks" to be.

Thursday:
Ringo Starr, "It Don't Come Easy" (because it don't)

Bryan Ferry, Let's Stick Together (because we should)
Tindersticks, Falling Down the Mountain (because I am)
Ultravox, Lament (because it seemed like a good idea at the time)
Neneh Cherry & the Thing, "Dream Baby Dream" (because it's what I do)
Eleanor Friedberger, Last Summer (because I love this record like summer vacation)
Be Bop Deluxe, Sunburst Finish (because it, er... is how we will all finish? A flaming solar fireball? A blast of sriracha? I dunno. I'm running out of steam for this.)

swooning in my swivel chair

Tuesday:
Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
The Smiths, Complete

I tried to dart out to go get my haircut at lunch but discovered the entire Smiths catalog is now on Spoitfy and was thus transfixed, swooning in my swivel chair before my little computer speakers. There are among you young'uns and old'uns that scoff, deeming the Smiths to be pussy music or as one friend on Facebook declared "toxic", and maybe. The Smiths make such a case, but, at this moment, kindly and quietly take your dullard's scorn elsewhere before I'm forced to slit a wrist at you. I JUST WANT TO SEE PEOPLE AND I WANT TO SEE LIFE, OKAY??!! (shrieks; runs off)



OK, Strangeways, Here We Come breaks the spell just like it did in 1987. After The Queen is Dead, there was, for me, no new territory across which to sullenly slouch and longingly gaze, at least until Morrissey butched up for Kill Uncle in '92. It was on that album's tour I saw him have a minor tantrum in a gold lamé suit amid piles of tattered gladiolas at the State Palace Theatre in New Orleans and finally knew what it meant to be in the presence of star power.

Wednesday:
Of Monsters and Men, My Head Is An Animal
Vincent Gallo, When
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile, Ritual Groove Music
Claus Boesser-Ferrari, Marc Ribot and Fred Frith, How We Became Americans
John Coltrane, Giant Steps
Sonny Landreth, The Road We're On

Still no haircut.

Being and nothingness manifesting in the three states of a lemon pie from Delpit's Chicken Shack

Being and nothingness manifesting in the three states of a lemon pie from Delpit's Chicken Shack.

open the doors on the season

The last of the camellias Sunday: J. Roddy Walston and the Business, J. Roddy Walston and the Business Monday: Al Stewart, Modern Times Barclay James Harvest, Barclay James Harvest Cynthia Dall, Untitled (RIP) Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light  (streaming at NPR)

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Photo of Cynthia Dall by Victor Gozion, via Drag City 

Poor Cynthia Dall. Her '96 album Untitled remains nothing short of dark revelation, like a storm brewing in your ear without the dull theatrical payoff of a thunderclap. Just brewing and brewing until you look up and the sky's gone black and you are left wondering what to do.


Her.


Not her.

---

I took some New Orleans folks out to Teddy's Juke Joint this Sunday to show them what's what for Louisiana Saturday Night and what its about, and they dug it. Alison mentioned that you have special places like this where the only time you go is to show it to someone else.

The flowers are instigating their spring riot out in the yard, too early, too confused. Global warming's oncoming rear 'round pollen count will kill us all, I'm convinced, that or the crazy mushrooms that can eat plastic.  Humanity will be but a flower fading in the distance, just like this one last cold snap camellia
holding out against all this gorgeous Spring.

 Until our species' eminent demise, things are all aces. The current book is selling well, the next one is seeing reasonable progress. Some new writing gigs. A new job actually, but more about that as the details materialize. Guitar class is going great; its almost like we are playing music. Some people are becoming teenagers in my house, which offers its own interesting seismic shifts but we all seem to be in bloom and the season.

April is poetry month and I always trot this one out because I love it so, and can't think of a less cliched number with which to open the doors on the season, so e.e. cummings, everybody.

---

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee