Author: hugh

Talk Radio Sandwich

Dirty bannisters never go out of style

I celebrated Obama’s VP pick by making an avocado sandwich on multigrain bread with Bavarian mustard, Havarti cheese, romaine lettuce and Florida tomato. I have knighted it the Biden Sandwich.

What’s happening to good New York news and talk radio? WNYC moved into its new home on Prince Street and dropped some of my favorite programming for more locally-flavored jabber. The morning BBC was replaced with “The Takeaway” which is basically nonstop interviews with desk flunkies. BBC reporters are the real deal. When they interview political leaders from around the world, you can hear the “you’re really full of shite, aren’t you?” British tone in their questions, especially from Owen Bennett Jones. So great. I also miss “To the Point” with Warren Olney (produced by KCRW) in the afternoons. Olney has the BBC attitude. It was replaced with the lamely titled and lackluster “Tell Me More.” They still have “On Point” and maybe with all those good points being made, WNYC was feeling a little like porcupine radio. Thankfully, the dropped shows are all still available on the internet.

Likewise, I no longer listen to Air America with all my favorite shows gone. Who’s running that syndicate? Milktoast McMilquetoast? The internet really is the salvation of good programming with Sam Seder and Randi Rhodes also still available. It’s Friday ya Bastids! Classic. With regard to Rachel Maddow, good for her! “Live audience. Live punk band. You know, mariachis for important segues…” Open Left asks the necessary, Mommy, Where Do Wankers Come From? Kudos to the Professor for his summer radio/TV crap wrap-up.

One of these days, I’ll post about my internet music.

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.

Happy Anniversary


Joe, Julie, Caiti, Cisco, Vince, me, Sandy, Mac, Guerneville, California

A year ago at this time, I was with my family in California celebrating my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, an achievement reserved for the few, the little bit crazy, the ever-loving lucky. Four of my siblings may also win this gold medal. This week my parents are celebrating their 51st so Happy Anniversary!

Nostalgia time! I can almost remember when I first learned “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” one of the ditties my parents taught the kids to sing in lieu of squabbling during trips to Arizona, Yosemite, and Utah. I thought it was the most hilarious and grand thing ever and how it was so great that “100 Bottles of Coke on the Wall” just didn’t sound right. That’s a lot of beer, I thought. What kind of weirdo puts 100 bottles of beer on a wall? Did my parents really sing this in college at parties all the way to zero and then start over? So easy to get with the program. Take one down! Pass it around!

We would all sing some rounds and then the older kids would get bored and drop out one by one and then the younger kids would sing it longer to show off how they could rock counting backwards. Finally, silence would break out in the car for a while until a smarty pants like me would start in with “A Million Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Good times. Are we there yet?

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.

Amplification


Can’t wrap my 3D fence around it

I’ve been rehearsing the Crimson Grail with over 200 guitarists and these massive guitar orchestra composers never seem to learn anything from each other. The score is in letter sequences that don’t follow one another. Solution: Provide a score that explains the parts in between your cues. Granted, Chatham does provide a lot of that but it’s not presented in an easily understood manner when a conductor is constantly waving at you. (I’m never going to be accepted into another guitar orchestra again.) Each part of the orchestra has different letters. There are conductors trying to cue people when to play and they’re doing hand gestures. Solution: more cue cards so everybody can be on the same page at certain points. Tonight we were in a church and no one had a mic and could not be heard unless their head was pointed at you. There were some cue cards for parts where everybody is supposed to be playing the same note. More cue cards! It still sounds very cool so show up if you’re interested.

My bass head fell five feet on the cold hard marble. Hm. Gotta go in early and test it again

I watched “Natural Born Killers” last night for the first time since I saw it in the theaters and it was way better than I remember. It’s Oliver Stone’s best satire. Stone’s skill is to amplify history through his films regardless of the absolute historical accuracy. With NBK, he made a film about the “popularity of violence” in the same way. With amplification, people might hear you in Poet’s Corner. Tell a story as truthfully as you can and if the facts are in dispute, your story may be the truest of the lot. Maybe it will stick. If the truth sticks, it looks prettier than when the shit sticks. Get off my lawn you kids — buy some guitars and make rad movies.

Ok, what else. I hope you’ve been reading TPM lately which has been following the McSame response to the Russia/Georgia conflict etc. McSame wants to be Nero and Caligula. He really wants the U.S. to follow in the footsteps of every failed empire in history. He’s running a shit campaign that appeals to the worst in America. The YOT (youth of today) must put the crusty old douchebag in an old folks’ home if they want hope.

Bought a Bass Head

I just bought a 150 watt Crate bass head from Craigslist for a very good price and it sounds a lot better than the Marshall head that I originally bought the Marshall cabinet with. It’s not the creamy tube sound everyone loves but it certainly does the trick and I have a new appreciation for this bottom-heavy 15 inch cabinet. (That old Marshall amp sounded so buzzy I’m rather ashamed I got so angry when a friend lost it at a party after I loaned it to him.) So why did I get this thing since I have a perfectly good 35 watt Peavey combo suitable for um, jazz…. ? I’ll be taking part in Rhys Chatham’s “Crimson Grail for 200 Guitars [and 16 basses]” at Lincoln Center on Friday, August 15th. Mr. Chatham specified that amps be ranked no lower than a rock-respectable 50 watts.

Having performed Glenn Branca’s “Hallucination City (Symphony for 100 Guitars)” at the World Trade Center in June of 2001, I can say that if you were to attend, your eardrums probably won’t be too blasted out. For Branca’s piece we were all assembled together in front of the audience but for this one, Chatham has all 216 instruments surrounding the audience. Hey, it was originally composed for 400 Guitars and performed mostly inside a church in Paris. Branca’s piece is easily more dissonant while Chatham’s piece is closer to choral music and Gregorian chant. I’ll be documenting the rehearsal process a bit which begins a week from today.

Update: I meant to say this earlier but I’m really into logo removal. My dad removed all of the logos from his cars and it made his cars cooler so why can’t I remove the logos from my amplifier retinue? Would they lose their bonafides on craigslist?