Category: Music

You Blew Up Your Television

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The gears of garbage trucks woke me up. On Tuesdays, my block is often blessed with the garbage truck followed by the recycling truck and they hold up traffic so with luck, we also get honks and yelling. It’s not much worse than being woken up by “The Takeaway” on WNYC. I’ll take that apartment across the street facing the courtyard with southern exposure now please. Thank you.

Heading to California for a week for Turkey Day with the family. I hope to have cheerier photos, however, I will also strive to make Orange County look as creepy as Manhattan at night.

Oh, those Swedes! Nina Ramsby has one of those voices that gets under your skin… well, my skin anyway. Say you’ve been sleeping with the pillow over your head because of garbage trucks outside and someone has to wake you up. It could be Nina, sure. Her melodies are beguiling while the lyrics sometimes border on the paranoid obsessive–which might be good or bad depending. Anyway, she’s got three major music projects: Salt, which was a grunge band in the vein of Nirvana from the 90s (I’m pretty sure I saw them open for a crappy band at Brownie’s in NYC); Grand Tone Music, who are a good deal mellower; and then Baxter, a drum-and-bass electronica outfit (not to be confused with American punk band Baxter). I like the latter the best but all three are worthwhile explorations. Lately, she’s been singing solo in Swedish and fiddling with experimental jazz and folk and other electronica.

A new Baxter is said to be ready any minute now.

Trainwrecks Redux

Miriam Makeba collapsed and died onstage in Italy on Monday. Recalling that the same thing happened to Mark Sandman of the band Morphine in 1999 — in Italy — I took it upon myself to research the mysterious Italian Onstage Collapse Syndrome. Well, of course. People do it all the time all over the world. Shakespeare says,

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

A collapse or actual murder onstage is the performance cut short– the ultimate point at which life and art are savagely united.

Eyes Closed, Head Tilted Just So

Free image for a neo-Krautrock  or goth band.

I caught the Bang on a Can Allstars with Terry Riley at Le Poisson Rouge the other night. The ways of Mr. Riley are mysterious and hippieful. That stuff usually makes me cringe but when it’s mixed up with blues for maharaja played by the Allstars, it commands respect.

For more enjoyable for me was the Tuesday show at the same venue which featured the music of David Lang. Closing the show was Maya Beiser, who performed the piece “World to Come.” The piece featured Ms. Beiser playing against loops of herself and vocal bits. Something about a cellist playing in ecstasy… it oddly reminded me of Meg White playing drums although Ms. White sometimes looks bored but it’s that sublime tilt of the head when they’re playing.

I’m Not There (but I’m Free)


Be careful of shrinks. If you say the wrong thing (or the right thing depending on your point of view), they will call the cops and put you in the psych ward. There really are shrinks out there who view their job the same way an asshole cop does: whatever it takes to keep the streets free of dirt. Mr. Bad Vibes must not be allowed on television figuratively, or on the 6 o’clock news. Judge, jury, sometimes executioner.

I just watched I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ brilliant film about Bob Dylan’s life in the 60s and early 70s. Yes, it’s brilliant. I’m listening to Dylan’s 1966 “Royal Albert Hall” concert. I’m behind the curve and need to stay up on these things when they hit the theaters. Anyone with a creative life, who has ever been onstage for an extended gig and has ever had to answer for it, or maybe if you’ve been a critic parsing someone else’s jello nailed to the wall — should have an appreciation for this film. If you’ve ever studied film, this is one for the books. The internets have enough written about it already. Do a google®.

In the commentary, Haynes throws out some zingers during the credits regarding freedom. I believe these were credited to Ginsberg and Rimbaud. “You are free only as long as you are free to say no.” And “No one is free. Even the birds are imprisoned by the sky.”

This brings me full circle to crap I usually talk about in this blog: politics. Bush’s insane “conservative” budget was ramped not just by the war on terror, but by a domestic spying program and police state (severe crowd control techniques) designed to intimidate naysayers into silence, as well as an expensive public relations effort designed to overwhelm naysayers and keep them out of mainstream media. I’m dead certain John McCain would continue expanding these mostly needless expenses that basically burn money and manufacture nothing — a largely overlooked black hole in the American economy. A transparent administration wouldn’t need such frivolity. Barack Obama appreciates that freedom without security is meaningless whereas security without freedom is an oxymoron. Obama embraces dialog and that is a breath of fresh air I can believe in.

George Bush has been the world’s (fascist) asshole cop long enough and needs to get in the shrink chair.

Joy Division, Control

Way, way after the fact: Control, the 2007 Ian Curtis biopic shot by Anton Corbijn (who does not have an official myspace page) is a wonderful film though it was hard to march on with it. The music has been important to me ever since I first heard it. A year after the Curtis story ended (1981) I read Mikal Gilmore’s Rolling Stone reviews of most of the Joy Division catalog (along with ramblings on PiL who I was already into). Punk was dead, I was hanging out with mostly the wrong crowd, and it was good time for Gang of Four and the Minutemen. A couple of weeks later I called a friend up for a listen. I thought it was brill but he didn’t like it and we headed out for beers and I totaled my Japanese compact car that afternoon running a red light.

I like that Corbijn got a real band together and shot real live concert footage. The cast is great. My one complaint is that he didn’t pursue shooting the film with real black and white film stock instead opting for the safety of color and digitally taking it to black and white. So it sometimes has a slight fakey feel. My digital camera does the same thing even if I set it to shoot in black and white. It isn’t black and white film innit? Why didn’t he consult with Peter Bogdonavich who made Paper Moon and Last Picture Show? — masterpieces of noirish black and white cinematography less than um, 40 years old. Taking Corbijn’s word, I suppose they just don’t make the good shit anymore.

Is the car on the right really the only thing that’s supposed to be in focus in this shot? Ha.

I’m at least hoping one can saunter into a decent karaoke bar these days and find more Joy Division besides “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” See this film if you’re a rock fan.
(images used per fair use… will remove if nec)

Knitting My Curls with Nebula

Stoner rockers can’t wait to bang their heads

I can’t take a rock band picture with my camera to save my life (without flash which I don’t use because flashes bug me when I’m onstage) so here’s another bar shot.

Nebula and Totimoshi and Orphan performed last night at the Knitting Factory for a great triple bill of stoner rock. The moniker is for the sort of heavy bluesy rock first formulated by Black Sabbath which is unfortunate as for me it’s just kick-ass. Being a Monday, only about 50 people attended which is fine by me as I find myself sometimes getting claustrophobic at crowded shows.

I listened to the Democratic Convention and speechifying in Denver a little bit. I have a few problems with the nominee but anything is a damn sight better than four more years of tremendously worse. The best critical lines I recall went something like, “McCain voted with George Bush 95% of the time. That’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick!” and Mark Warner, the keynote speaker said something like, “Some say George Bush was born already on third base. Well, after the gazillion dollar surplus and 22 million jobs left to him by Bill Clinton, George Bush came into office on third base. And in his eight years in office, he didn’t make it to home plate, he stole second base.” Ahahahaha.

Saw Me in a Mag

More photos of the 200 Guitars debacle over at Prefix Magazine. I’m in two of them with the rain hair. It wasn’t really a debacle, just sort of a big disappointment. It would’ve been a debacle if we all started playing and got electrocuted. I wish I had a socialized more during the rehearsals but I wasn’t in the greatest of moods. Anyway, Rhys Chatham said he’d try to re-stage it next year.

The photos were taken by my friend, Gabi Porter, who further inspired my photographic tendencies. She sold one of her Iggy Pop prints for $600 (I think).

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

A Michael Jackson/Johnny Cash moment in Walk Hard

I didn’t think all that much of Walk the Line, The Ray Charles Story, La Bamba, Sweet Dreams, The Doors Movie, or even Sid and Nancy. All took their subject matters too seriously to a fault cramming all the iconic cliches of legendary music careers into Hollywood chunks of serialized detergent commercials (“You’re soaking in it!”). The good movies about those music stars are the documentaries. So I had a good chuckle at Walk Hard. It’s the Scary Movie of musical biopics. Highly recommended.

200 Guitars Cancelled

Great rehearsal photos at Brooklyn Vegan. My music stand is in a couple. As a couple of the commenters at BV noted, the management could’ve easily informed the crowd earlier of their decision to silence the guitars.

There were contingency plans to perform the piece in the rehearsal space — the church — and the management was foolish to hope it would be dry earlier tonight. I was hoping with them but still…

Update: Here are a few photos from the soundcheck. The top features John King conducting my section with Rhys up onstage. The last shows all the gear under wraps while it rained.