NYC Recap Part I: Oh, To Be a Ramblin' Gypsy

Good to be back and (almost) caught up. New York was a great time—if only I were able to do more, to explore each nook and cranny, neighborhood and side street, restaurant and record store, street vendor and subway stop—oh to be more than just another stinkin’ tourist with his neck craned upwards to the sky. The only true solution? Move, I guess. This is becoming my default reaction whenever I spend a few days in an unfamiliar city: I fall in love and want to move there. I had that feeling for DC at one time, felt it strongly on a handful of trips to Austin over the last few years, and then again during my excursions to LA last year.

I felt the same way when I first moved to Denver—that mad, childlike exuberance to be out of the Midwest for the first time, determined to soak up each and every sight and sound and smell of this new world—whatever it is that makes each place unique. In a perfect world, I could take up residence somewhere, say, Austin—soak it up and take it all in for a few years—then pull up the tents, move on, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Oh, to be the wandering gypsy. But alas, the design of modern life gets in the way. In the end, you can only be in one place at any given time—for now—though I’d cast my lot with any technology that could circumvent this flaw in the fabric of life. Molecular teleportation, anyone?

Moving is out of the question, to NYC, anyway—so, for now, it looks like I’m stuck with the tourism option. And I haven’t even begun to tap the world outside of these American borders—my only experience out of the country to date was what used to be an annual summer vacation to Canada—but I haven’t been there since second freakin’ grade.

Still, for all the awe I felt at being a small part of the Manhattan life, if only for four measly days, I couldn’t help but to long wistfully for the glory days of old New York, a New York I never saw, the New York of Bob Dylan and the Ramones, the New York of Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. These days, like most everywhere else, the name of the game is gentrification. Coincidentally, these very same thoughts were published on Slate only today:

There's no bohemia in today's New York. Nothing resembles Greenwich Village in its various incarnations from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s, or the art-scene East Village of the late 1970s and 1980s, or Williamsburg in the early 1990s…

Bohemia doesn't exist as a place. There's no point chasing after it. The bars, saloons, and clubs where bohemians once congregated—the Cedar Tavern on University Place (where the Abstract Expressionist painters met), Cafe Reggio on McDougal Street (a hang-out for the Beat poets, for Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), CBGB on the Bowery (the punk bohemian metropolis of the '70s and early '80s)—aren't bohemian in any sense. Today, the clientele at these places are likely to be students or tourists.

N/P Indian Summer - discography

Placeholder for a Post

Damn, you leave for four freakin’ days and yr entire life goes to pot. Well, not really, of course. But besides unpacking, there’s a ton of emails to read and respond to, a crapload of blog postings to catch up with, ten LPs sold on ebay to package up and ship out, the balancing of financial statements, paying of bills, expensing of expenses, dirty clothes to launder, mail to open, Tivo’d shows to watch, new CDs and records to get my head around...

It’s overwhelming. Plus, there’s that job thang. What I wouldn’t give to call in sick tomorrow. But I already did that last Monday, and I took a half-day the Friday before that. I like my job and the free trips to NYC and LA, so best not to rock the boat.

I had a great time in the Big City. You’ll get the blow-by-blow tomorrow, along with a complete inventory of record purchases. (Or, more accurately, later today–gee whiz, look at the time, it’s Monday already.)

Right now I gots ta catch me some zzzz’s, or I won’t be worth two shits in the mornin'.

But first, three cheers for all the purple fingers in Iraq. However flawed the election might have been, whatever problems there were, it could have been so, so, so much worse. I give thanks for that. Let us hope that this really is the turning point.

N/P Roky Erickson – Don’t Slander Me

Anti-Rove in New York

Greetings, everyone. Six hours and thirty-six minutes from now I will be in-flight, en route to the not-so-sunny, not-so-tropical environs of Gotham itself for a little mingling of business and pleasure. Lucky me, I managed to convert a two-day Microsoft seminar into a nearly four-day half-vacation, with my employer footing (most of) the bill.

That I’ll be in the belly of the beast, at Microsoft, for two days is an irony in itself. About a month ago I ditched Internet Explorer, making the jump to Firefox and haven’t looked back. In addition, I am currently in the process of moving my personal email account from its decade-long home on Microsoft’s hotmail servers to Google’s superior gmail, which, while it takes some getting used to, I’m lovin’. Thanks Bonati.

I’ve never been a fan of Microsoft products, much less its business tactics, yet it’s more difficult these days to come down too hard on Gates & Co. when he’s running around donating nearly a billion dollars to such worthy causes as third-world immunization. Sure, you could be cynical and say that it's mere pocket change to Gates, who only wants these folks alive and healthy so the brute Microsoft can expand into those untapped markets, and you might be right. But I would counter that by saying it doesn’t matter so much why he does it, it is a wonderful thing; and if driven by the stench of rapacious capitalism, well then so be it. You know, means and ends.

Anyway, this will mark only my third visit to the Big Apple. I came through back in ’99 while on tour with Planes Mistaken for Stars, and before that, in the summer of ’97, while interning in DC, I partnered with the aforementioned Bonati on a road trip up to NYC. So it’s been awhile. And neither time did I spend more than a day or two in the city, so let’s just say I have yet to experience all that the city has to offer.

I’ll be meeting up with a couple of friends that I rarely get to see—Mark Iwanski and I may hit up a jazz club tomorrow night, and I’ll see if I can convince him to join me on an all-day rampage through the record stores of lower Manhattan on Saturday. Friday night I’m meeting up with Andrew Bottomley, of Skyscraper magazine fame, for drinks and lord knows what else. Perhaps he can introduce me to his boss, you may have heard of him, one Martin Scorcese. One can dream, at least… :)

I’ll be missing my lovely wife and beautiful baby girl (the pit bull, that is), but I’ll be home soon enough. I’m crossing my fingers for broadband in my hotel room, but right now, I’m not sure just how connected I’m gonna be. So the blogging is unlikely to be as frequent as usual, but we’ll see what happens. Depending on the setup at MS, I may be able to sneak in a post or two during the seminar. Plus, I have an old article I wrote for Skyscraper a few years ago that I’ll be posting as well, so Unfinished Novellas will not be dead anytime soon. But it might take a nap.

N/P Dreamies – s/t

Lists, Links, & Frags...

Cuz it’s all I got right now.

• Debating whether or not to get Paul Westerberg tickets.

• Candle wax and stains on the carpet, still.

• A bit about BitTorrent.

• This will lead you to this will lead you to this.

• Flavor Flav loses his street cred.

• A look back at more than a quarter century of hip hop. “The leading US historian of hip hop, Nelson George, celebrates its rise - and questions this new cultural hegemony, asking who stole the soul and Steve Yates picks 25 moments that defined the music.”

• Another Carson tribute (did anyone not like this guy?), this one from President Peabs, who does not bestow such honors lightly.

• Just placed an order for a number of limited edition CDRs in the Digitalis Empire’s Foxglove series. My picks: Family LSD, The Futurians, WOLFMANGLER, Cone Bearers, and United Bible Studies. Not sure yet what any of these acts actually sound like, but, per the Foxglove mission statement, they should fall somewhere within the realm of avant/experimental/psych/drone. Psychedelic candy fer yr earholes.

• Gin & Tacos sells a professional ass-beating on ebay, “the wild west of capitalism for the modern era”, “the place where pretty much anything goes, and that which does not go (e.g., selling organs) has been explicitly forbidden because someone tried it.” Geniuses.

Tonite's tunes:
The Red Crayola – Parable of Arable Land
Plastic Crimewave Sound – Flashing Open
Nick Castro – A Spy in the House of God
The Deep – Psychedelic Moods of the Deep
Decemberists – Castaways & Cutouts

Bulletins From the Easy Chair

My recently reunited good friend, former roommate, and fellow Peoria native bedheaded is taking his noisereview project to new heights—first with the nsrvwblog, and now with nsrvwpod. His inaugural podcast is a splendidly diverse 33:20, running dub into pop into jazz into indie into skronk just the way I like it. The song selection is stellar, not a misstep to be heard. Features an excellent (and rare) Deerhoof song and a killer Go-Betweens number I hadn’t heard before, some Augustus Pablo, Sun Ra, Elf Power, Canyon, and more. Bedheaded’s in-between song banter lends a human touch to the proceedings—it was good to hear yr voice again, my friend. Long live Frink!

I read a post on some blog a few weeks ago, I can’t remember where, but it was all about Depeche Mode’s 1987 record, Music for the Masses, which just so happens to be one of the two DM records in my collection. I’ve never been a big fan, never played it that much back in the day, and hadn’t heard it in years, but that post inspired me to dust it off. When I first threw it on the turntable again, I was so totally unprepared to be blown away by how great it is! This record sounds so huge and orchestral and wonderful, you know, in a Depeche Mode-kinda way. Seriously, though, dust this off if ya got it, or pull out yr favorite eighties synth record tonight—do it for me.

A few weeks back I quote started to get unquote Richard and Linda Thompson. Sometimes it just takes awhile for this kinda stuff to hit ya the right way—and you have to be in a certain place in your musical wanderings to fully appreciate it. On a similar note, last week at Twist & Shout I came across one of those cheap 20th Century Masters comps—The Best of Sandy Denny: The Millennium Collection—for only $5.99, a deal, of course I could not pass up. Smart move. For some reason, this disc, featuring Denny’s solo stuff alongside a handful of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay tracks, was what I needed to really stoke an interest in her material. It definitely whets my appetite for more Denny, and serves nicely as an introduction, of sorts, to her work. (All I’ve heard thus far was Fairport’s Liege and Lief, featuring both Denny and Richard Thompson—this, too, I think I’m starting to "get".)

N/P Fairport Convention – Liege and Lief

What is Neurocam?

Neurocam

Oh, My Head!

Oh, god, what a day—a day of waste, recovery, and dull, throbbing pain. My head still hurts, my throat’s a bit sore, my stomach queasy. I’ve had far worse hangovers, of course, though they are now fewer and farther between, but today is definitely one of those days where it just plain hurts to think. Only now, after ten o’clock and a day’s worth of utter sloth, am I not absolutely nauseated by the idea of gazing at a monitor.

But alas, if this is the cost for last night, then I think it was worth the price. Like most good parties, the day-after blow-by-blow will not be readily available, no matter how hard I try to coax it out of the thick, hazy fog of the night before, but I do recall a few of the more tantalizing details.

If memory serves, things started getting pretty interesting right about the time Bell Biv Devoe’s “Do Me” dropped. (Strangely enough, somehow I feel a certain déjà vu feeling about that last statement.) Anyway, this was the first point in my DJ set at which I was forced off-script—the crowd had to have “Poison” too, and who could blame them?

Somebody I know, we’ll call her Jane Doe, passed out suspiciously early, again. More entertainment arrived, in canine form: my 75-pound pit bull Crystal spent all night in high flirtation mode, earning hours of non-stop action from this ultra-cute little Jack Russell terrier, Ziggy. I busted out a wig that ended up a key prop in a hilarious series of photographs, only one of which did my wasted, picture-taking self manage to save.

I remember finishing the rest of the third mix, and then going into full-on, old school hip-hop mode. It wouldn’t be a party if The Chronic wasn’t dusted off, and boy was it! By this point, general inhibitions had long since been cast aside, and much dancing, a bit of Office Space-style white-boy rappin’, and a showing-off of tattoos ensued.

Somebody passed out in the bathroom with her head in the toilet and the door locked and we had to use a hanger to pick the lock. A few minutes later, somebody else came up and asked if it was okay that the dogs were outside…I was like, front or back yard?…he was like, front…I was like, uh, no, that’s SO not okay…turns out, somehow they were halfway down the block…

To top things off, I totally fried my speakers. I mean, they’re utterly worthless now. I didn’t even realize they were blown until that fact was kindly pointed out to me by a number of others…if that tells you anything about my condition at that point. Yet somehow I managed the mental acuity to blow out all the candles and return perishables to the fridge before passing out, not-so-gently into that good night.

This morning I woke up about nine, said goodbye to a few friends who had crashed here, stared vacantly at the television for a few, and promptly returned to bed at 10:30. It was almost four in the afternoon when I woke up again, useless for anything but couch potato-dom and the ingestion of Halls mentho-lyptus.

Had I not turned down that last tequila shot, though, today would have been infinitely worse. And so far, despite the fact that tomorrow is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, (a date actually calculated by the equation [W + (D-d)] x TQ / (M x NA), in which (W) = weather, (D) = debt, (d) = monthly salary, (T) = time since Christmas, (Q) = time since failed quit attempt, (M) = low motivational levels and (NA) = the need to take action), I’m leaning towards going to work in the morning.

Btw, if you’re not sick of tributes to Johnny Carson, I’ll point you to these two:

A Moment of Silence, for someone who knew what it meant

How to be a gentleman

Playing:
Queens of the Stone Age – s/t
Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower
Michael Hurley – Long Journey
Acid Mothers Temple – New Geocentric World of…
Ghost – s/t
Gandalf – s/t

Mixed Up: The LCD Funster, Parts 2 & 3

Our guests begin arriving in just over an hour, and at last the mix trilogy is complete. (Background: see my first LCD Funster post).

Should be a fun time tonight. We threw a party for the same crowd last year, and my drunk ass spent all evening stumbling up and down the stairs to the turntable every three or four minutes to throw on another song. And while I’m certain to mix it up a bit, take requests, and veer spontaneously away from the regularly scheduled program, these mixes should allow the DJ some breathing room so’s I can actually do some socializin’.

Without further adieux, discs two and three:

Disc Two

01 Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
02 Victor – Go On Do It
03 Justin Timberlake – Rock Yr Body
04 Moonbabies – Fieldtrip USA
05 Kiss – Detroit Rock City
06 Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
07 Doobie Bros – Listen to the Music
08 Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy
09 DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince – Summertime
10 Tom Petty – American Girl
11 Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink
12 Hi-Tension – British Hustle
13 Foreigner – Feels Like the First Time
14 Morphine – Buena
15 Ice Cube – Wicked
16 Talking Heads – Life During Wartime
17 Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
18 Astrud Gilberto – Take Me to Aruanda
19 Rezillos – Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight
20 Bobby Brown – On Our Own

Disc Three

01 DJ Shadow – Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)
02 Bell Biv Devoe – Do Me
03 Guns n’ Roses – You Could be Mine
04 TV on the Radio – Staring at the Sun
05 Night Ranger – Sister Christian
06 Temptations – Psychedelic Shack
07 Frankie Valli – Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
08 Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar
09 Information Society – What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)
10 Run DMC – It’s Tricky
11 The Cars – Hello Again
12 Madonna – Open Your Heart
13 Tommy James & the Shondells – Crystal Blue Persuasion
14 Sly & the Family Stone – Thank You Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin
15 Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
16 Rocket From the Crypt – Middle
17 Devo – Whip It
18 Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me
19 Thompson Twins – Hold Me Now
20 The Big Bopper – Big Bopper’s Wedding
21 Digital Underground – Humpty Dance

I had in mind several ideas for the remainder of this post: jotting a brief note about each track, ruminating over the typical acoustic idiosyncrasies of my mixes (which the noiseboy always used ta give me shit about), describing some of the minor headaches that arose in putting these discs together, re-invoking my disclaimer regarding their more mainstream content, or free-associating on seventies funk, eighties glam metal, or nineties “alternative.”

Instead, I’m just gonna sign off.

Until next time.

N/P The Gris Gris – s/t

On the Internets

• Have you heard yet about the recent controversy over SpongeBob SquarePants? It seems the increasingly megalomaniacal Dr. James Dobson has got his panties in a bunch over the popular cartoon character, accusing him/it of promoting a covert homosexual agenda. Go here for some thoughtful analysis (“By turning SpongeBob into controversy, groups losing credibility”); then, better yet, go check my boys at Gin & Tacos for a hilarious and slightly more irreverent take.



• A bit of self-congratulation. Unfinished Novellas is currently the #6 site on google for the search: "michael jackson" infantile regression.



• The Night David Lee Roth Saved My Life. Need I say more?



• An unholy trinity: Ronnie James Dio, George W. Bush, and Satan, courtesy of No More Mister Nice Blog.



• Dehydrated1 turned me on to If Flannery Had a Blog, in which one of my all-time favorite writers, Flannery O’Connor, blogs poetic and waxes philosophic from the grave.



• THE Mike Johnson passed this on to me. If you didn’t already think the fine fux at Fox News are shills for the Bush administration, watch the clip.



• Talk about activist judges!



• Taking Sides: Southern Man v. Sweet Home Alabama



• Finally, one of my new favorites…So Sayeth the Peabs. If it don’t make sense, you ain’t drunk enough. Hyper-imaginative, laugh-out-loud tales from the mouth of Bill Cosby’s right-hand man, President Peabs, who claims to have gone down on both Thelonious and Art Monk in one sitting. Reminds me of some of dehydrated1’s late-night intoxicated ramblings. Try a slice:
  

  Yesterday morning, Bill Cosby was shitting on the kitchen floor when he turned to yours effing truly and asked if we should quickly split an eight-ball (or 4) and go to Charles Bronson's house for his annual "Dirty Dozen Party". For those of you unaware, every year Chuck invites his share of filthy starlets (and equally as filthy faux-politicos like my gorgeous self) to dress up as cast members from his timeless 1967 motion picture and reenact scenes. Well, sorta. Actually, it's a bunch of trannies and drag queens obsessed with Jim Brown injecting smackysmack into their Uncle Festicles and baking Gyne-Lotrimin cookies. By the dozen.

N/P Double Leopards – Halve Maen (side C)

Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom. Iraq?

I wasn’t feeling that great today so I took the afternoon off to rest a little, get my mind straight, and perhaps unfinish a novella or two. On the bus ride home, hoping to take a load off, I dug eagerly into the latest edition of Vanity Fair, only to become tremendously horrified and enormously agitated while reading “The Man in the Hood and New Accounts of Prisoner Abuse in Iraq,” in which Donovan Webster explores "the perversion of America’s mission.”

Everybody knows about Abu Ghraib, I ain’t gotta rehash it for ya’ll, but I will say that the deeper you wade into this ongoing tragedy and the more facts that are uncovered, the more clearly horrifying our true position becomes. Yet I’m afraid most Americans have already tuned out these bloody, torturous affairs like so much television ( just another reality show), even as they slowly but surely coarsen and erode the soul of this nation. By the time the other half of the country is ready to ‘fess up to our mistakes, it will be too late. In fact, I think it already may be.

As this article makes painfully clear, the Abu Ghraib scandal did not end with its public outing—such vile, inhuman behavior continues to this day, despite the hollow assurances of Bush and Rumsfeld. Americans would like to think that it was just a couple of bad apples, that justice was done by turning a handful of low-level soldiers into convenient fall guys; we want to inoculate ourselves from the guilt. Yet it seems that to delude an entire country (or half of one) is just as easy as to delude one’s self. But I guess the Nazis already proved that one.

My feelings about this war used to be quite complex. At first, I was less against the war itself than I was against its rushed timing and the inexcusable bungling of it by the administration. I’ve always believed that war, while tragic, is sometimes necessary, and I’ve held out hope that we would learn from our terrible mistakes in this one. Even as the insurgency expanded, I still hoped that we would find some way to stabilize Iraq and help to bring about the messy business of democracy. I wanted the troops out, but I was against the so-called “cut and run” option.

No more. Time has proven me wrong (see, Dubya, it ain't so hard), and my feelings now are plain and simple. We need to get the hell out of Iraq now. Our actions there have led us to a point that nothing good will ever come from our presence, no matter how long we stay or how hard we try. Colin Powell’s so-called Pottery Barn rule has flown out the window: we may have broken Iraq, but we will never be able to fix it.

One of the casualties of this war for me personally has been my own sense of optimism. While I remain an optimist in the long run, sort of (what’s the point of living, otherwise?), I’ve definitely and regrettably become a pessimist in the short-term. This Iraq war is becoming another Vietnam, only worse, this time with more dreadful repercussions, the likes of which I fear we have barely begun to experience.

“The Americans came to us promising freedom and democracy. If that is freedom and democracy…I don’t want it.”

I wasn’t planning on getting into the whole inaugural thing (except to say to my friends in DC: I’m really, really sorry…and thank goodness, for your sakes, that it’s over!), I sort of tuned it out yesterday cuz I didn’t see the point—I mean, why torture myself? But Bush’s “freedom speech” begs for a reality check. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post weighs in:

Is he really committed to this? What is he going to do about it? Does this mean no more close relations with repressive governments? Does he mean like in Iraq?

In short, what's not at all clear is how his stirring script actually plays out in the real world -- or whether the White House has even thought that out.

And although Bush used the words ''free," "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times in the speech, he didn't once use the words "terror" or "war" or "Iraq" -- even though his first term was defined by terror and war, and even though American blood was still being shed in Iraq as he spoke.

Ronald Brownstein writes in the LA Times:

Few Americans would quarrel with the twin ambitions that anchored Bush's speech: encouraging the spread of liberty abroad and increasing ownership and economic choice at home. But the looming question is whether Bush's policies are moving the nation and the world toward achieving those aims, much less at a price most Americans consider acceptable. . . .

Somebody should explain the concept of freedom to our President, cuz I just don’t think he gets it. Perhaps we should send him a link to this post from The Long Cut, in which the formerly-known-as Accidental Blogist compiles a handy list for the President of all the nations of the world that are either not free or only partly free. 103 of ‘em. That’s a helluva lot of warfare.

How ironic that Bush was re-elected in part based on the supposed strength of the so-called "moral values" crowd, yet presides with seeming pride over what is surely one of the two or three greatest moral failures in the history of this nation.

Speaking of bitter ironies, let us remember who said this, oh so long ago:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

N/P, this afternoon:

Killing Joke – s/t
The Rezillos – Can’t Stand the Rezillos
AC Newman – The Slow Wonder
The Monks – Black Time
Pylon – Gyrate
Bill Fay – From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock
Acid Mothers Temple – In C

Of Skin and Dirt and Stars and Leaves

I was glad to see that my friend, the esteemed noiseboy, has fallen in line with the emerging consensus on the super-duper-greatness of one Black Mountain. Wait’ll ya hear the whole thang, jack—the third spin was better than the second—and feel free to check yr skepticism at the door, even as the impending Hype Machine gears up and Mountain, Black becomes 2005’s Fire, Arcade, or Ferdinand, Franz (or, more appropriately, this year’s Fire, Comets On). I’ll be gettin’ down, no matter what the Machine do, cuz the only thing more irritating than superfluous hype is the inevitable backlash from an unofficial cabal of self-righteous hipster contrarians, the cynical keepers of cool.

Yes yes y'all, we are the Too Damn Hype
Too Damn Hype, now let's do this right

Speaking of Comets On Fire, there’s a new Six Organs of Admittance LP called School of the Flower coming out next week. It seems that ace six-slinger Ben Chasny is movin’ on up to Drag City, having finally gotten his piece of the pie. I adored his last record, Dark Noontide; it clocked in at #19 on last year’s Best-Of list. But if I ever get around to a revision (the list is, after all, but a rough draft), it may just inch up a few notches. This just in: Dark Noontide came out in 2002, you sniveling EEDIOT, and Chasny’s put out several records since then. Fuck, I can't stand it when I’m so obviously, verifiably wrong. Not to mention, this isn’t the only record I was forced to disqualify from my Best Of ’04 list because the damn thing didn’t come out in 2004! Looks like Unfinished Novellas needs a new editor. Interested parties, your resumes please...

Regardless, I’m pretty psyched for School of the Flower. But Georgiana Cohen of Splendid ezine is not:

The band's name comes from Buddhist terminology used to describe the five senses plus the soul. After attending classes at School of the Flower, I have to say that my tongue is pensively bitten, my ears are wincing and I have not seen the light. I'm not touched and my soul isn't any more at ease. And the scent of incense is overwhelming.

Even not having heard the record yet, I’ll have to respectfully disagree with the too-cutesy-for-her-own-goodsy Ms. Cohen. She obviously just doesn’t get it.

But there are plenty of true believers out there. Foxy D, any tips for Ms. Cohen?

To fully appreciate what Chasny is saying, one must become part of the music. You must listen to it; you must physically feel it; you must let it run through your bloodstream and into your bones. This is easier for some people than for others, but he is there to guide you. This music is made from skin and dirt and stars and leaves. Everything this universe has to offer is embodied in Six Organs.

Thanks much, Foxy, and if I may say, sir, you reek of patchouli!

N/P Satyricon – Nemesis Divina

Mountains of Salt in Wounds, I'll Take Mine Black, Please

With the noiseboy out of the record-buying game for at least the next 347 days, I’ve decided to pick up the extra slack and spend about twice as much money on records as I did in ’04.

A brief pause while I let that sink in.

Okay, I’m lying. (Long, deep sigh of relief from all parties.) I already can’t keep up with the constant deluge of new music (though it doesn’t keep me from trying—damn this newfangled Internets), and throwing more money at the situation, even if it were fiscally possible (forget responsible!) and wife-approved, will certainly not help that. It seems that a similar type of vacation will be in order…someday, someday.

But until then, knowing the noiseboy is out there waiting, already anxious for ’06 and living vicariously through my record purchasing, that—that is what keeps me going. And if so much buying is pouring salt in open wounds, then I, the devil on the noiseboy’s shoulder, command this masochistic one-album-a-month fast to an end, in the name of, um, Lester Bangs and, uh, that guy John Cusack played in High Fidelity!

The noiseboy, yesterday afternoon:

Subject: what do you know about...
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:43:44 -0600

Black Mountain, and their new self-titled record?

Unbeknownst to him, I had, in fact, only just returned from the wonderful world of record stores, the venerable Twist & Shout to be exact, where I purchased, among numerous other things, the freshly-minted and much-anticipated debut from Vancouver’s finest. All of a sudden, it seems, Vancouver’s the place to be.

I fired back:

Subject: re: what do you know about...
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:07:32 -0500

Black Mountain = one of Jon's favorite new bands.

I had the Drugonauta 12" and it fuckin' smoked. Getting ready to order some Jerk with a Bomb and Pink Mountaintops...

Vancouver baby!

I’m not sure of the entire lineage and don’t feel like researching it now, but suffice it to say that Jerk with a Bomb and the Pink Mountaintops are incestuous kin to the Black Mountain collective. Said order was placed this evening through Scratch Records.

So I’m only on my second pass through the Black Mountain LP (the too-many-records, not-enough-time predicament), but I like it a lot—an awful lot. It’s hard to say right now, but I can definitely see this landing near the top of my list for ’05. Right now it’s Number One with a bullet.



More so than the My Morning Jacket and Comets on Fire references dropped by Pitchfork and to be repeated ad infinitum by lesser cool kids everywhere, two different bands leapt to my mind more immediately: Dead Meadow and Oneida. Black Mountain sorta lies somewhere between the smoke-ringed laziness of the Meadow and Oneida’s hyperactive kraut-punk, but definitely shares with MMJ and Comets, as well as bands like the Gris Gris, a very sincere, if totally invented, feel for the zeitgeist of seventies rock. But I think Black Mountain has better songs than MMJ, more soul than the Meadow, and a subtler touch than Comets. They could be THE band to break this scene wide open. Stay tuned.

N/P Primal Scream – Screamadelica

Mixed Up: The LCD Funster

Phew! I am now one disc and one-third of the way through a planned three-CDR trilogy which I have christened The LCD Funster Mixes. The background: we are hosting a small get-together for some of Jodi’s work friends this weekend, and I wanted to have a few discs worth of material that I could just throw on so I would not constantly worry about what twelve-incher to throw on next.

Rule number one: Know your audience. “Work friends” covers a broad spectrum of folks, with entirely different, and many times conflicting, tastes in music. These are people for whom music is not at the center of their lives—difficult for someone like me to imagine. An audience and a setting for which the value of obscurity plummets—the only thing that matters is keeping the party going.

That’s my explanation for the relative mainstream-edness of what follows. It may seem odd, but there are in fact people out there who’ve never heard of the Arcade Fire, and that’s who the LCD Funster is for, indie cred be damned.

Roll disc one…

01 The Clash – London Calling
02 Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name
03 Beastie Boys – Jimmy James
04 Johnny Cash – Get Rhythm
05 Stevie Wonder – I Was Made to Love Her
06 Pavement – Cut Yr Hair
07 Human League – Don’t You Want Me
08 Cheap Trick – Surrender
09 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Got Yr Money
10 Ike & Tina – Contact High
11 RHCP – Scar Tissue
12 Beatles – I’ve Just Seen a Face
13 Modest Mouse – Float On
14 Poison – Talk Dirty to Me
15 Afghan Whigs – Creep
16 Rick Springfield – Don’t Talk to Strangers
17 Stars – Elevator Love Letter
18 Link Wray – Rumble
19 Jackson 5 – I Want You Back
20 2Pac – 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted
21 Shuggie Otis – Strawberry Letter 23
22 The Animals – Misunderstood
23 Flamin’ Groovies – Bam Balam
24 Samantha Fox – I Wanna Have Some Fun
25 Elvis Presley – That’s All Right

Two more of these to go. Should be fun. Definitely will be a fun listen.

I got so much other stuff on my mind, but alas, look at the time. Too tired. More tomorrow. Peace to the noiseboy, the original Mixed Up One.

N/P Can – The Free Concert DVD

Chan Lite and Doughboy

There’s an mp3 making minor waves on the web right now—several nights ago I encountered posts on it at three different blogs, including the ubiquitous largeheartedboy, and a quick google confirms many more. The sound file in question would be former Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Nina Gordon’s neo-folk reinterpretation of N.W.A’s 1989 classic (and arguably the greatest hip hop number ever…anyone?) “Straight Outta Compton.”

I was never a Veruca Salt fan, but as an artifact of the post-Nirvana days of mid-nineties alternative, I did always secretly enjoy “Seether” and still remember vividly how you could sing over its chorus: “sounds like the Breeders.” Anyway, it seems that, instead of Kim Deal, Nina G now wishes she were Chan Marshall (Cat Power). That said, it’s not an entirely unappealing slice of pop culture, and I do enjoy the post-sampling novelty of genre smash-ups. (uh, I think.) Toss in covers of Cinderella’s “Nobody’s Fool” (very cool), Skid Row’s “18 and Life” (almost as good), and Phil Collins’ “One More Night” (I could do without), and you just might find yourself wondering what her originals sound like. Maybe. [mp3s here]

But enough Chan Lite—that was only s’posed to be an awkwardly tangential segue into my screening a few nights ago of Boyz N’ the Hood, one of three movies in my life during which I distinctly recall shedding tears (the others: E.T. and Dead Poets Society). Nearly a decade has gone by since I’d last seen it, and I had little idea whether the film would retain the enormous power with which it mesmerized my previous incarnation as a lily-white, pimply-faced high school sophomore in the Midwest, first discovering Malcolm X and hip hop culture.

Back then, hip hop mattered. I mean REALLY mattered. It was, as Chuck D put it, "The CNN of Black America." It was dangerous. It threatened the powers that be. It gave voice to the disenchanted and beaten-down. And besides that, it opened up the eyes of sheltered white suburban kids like me—we who grew up going to schools that were, for all intents and purposes, nearly as segregated, albeit unofficially, in the eighties and nineties as they were before Brown v. the Board. Those of us listening to Death Certificate weren’t surprised when the LA riots when down. When Ice Cube talked, we listened. And that scared the hell out of parents all over this country.

Watching Boyz n’ the Hood again after all these years, I remember each and every scene as if it were yesterday. Certainly one of the great directorial debuts of all time—but what a heavy weight to carry for the rest of your career! Where are you now, John Singleton? Take a bow, for you’ll never top what you did at 23. And my, oh my, how far Ice Cube has come from his debut acting gig, and still his greatest role, as Doughboy. Following his buddy Ice-T (New Jack City) onto the silver screen, Cube gives a fiercely poignant performance that would set a pretty high standard for all rap star/actors to come. But seriously, have you seen the previews for Cube’s latest, Are We There Yet?, yet? Now that’s more shocking to me than any riff on white America that O’Shea Jackson ever did spout in his former life as one of AmeriKKKa’s Most.

A lot has changed since ’91, even if we are still stuck with a Bush in the White House. One might decry the relative lack of meaning in a lot of hip hop today, the seeming triumph of bling over substance, and one might be right. But while folks like me might miss the hip hop of our youth, disappointed at witnessing yet another revolutionary force perverted by the excesses of capitalism, it was always about more than the music. Perhaps more than any other genre, hip hop is driven by socio-economic factors, many of which, in some ways, have changed for the better (though not nearly enough, surely) since 1992, the year after Boyz was released, the same year Rodney King got punk'd by the LAPD and Reginald Denny was pulled out of the cab of his truck and beaten silly. No one wishes a return to those days. Still, I liked it better when Cube was Cube, a “crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube,” to be exact.

N/P Giant Sand – Chore of Enchantment

Shut My Own Damn Blog?

Hmmm. Controversy brews on the Unfinished Novellas. It seems that today’s early AM post on the comedic genius of Shut Yer Blog has caused ripples:

Precisely why some of us don't want you to add links to our blogs on your site. And also precisely why my blog isn't public. Let Steph write her silly sheep stories and talk about Jesus! Can you imagine what would happen to her head if she read your blog? It would explode! However, I also believe that you are entitled to think her writing is stupid.

Ouch! Smackdown! Or was it, really? Did I do something wrong here? I thought hard about it the whole bus ride home. When I got home, I plugged in the old laptop, and damned if someone hadn’t come to my defense:

Oh come on, this forum would get pretty boring pretty quickly if Anti-Rove is to encompass and consider the "emotions" of every random yokel out there in cyber-space so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. I think most of his audience is of a like mind and gets a huge kick out of Rico the Squirrel's hilarity...if Stephanie doesn't want anyone to comment on her blog, maybe she should spare us all and keep it private.

So there you have it. Two pretty distinct points of view, both of which, I feel, hold some merit. Certainly by putting one’s opinions out there in such a public forum, one risks a certain amount of ridicule, and part of me feels that that just comes with the territory. It’s the same chance taken by anyone who’s ever been in a band or given a public speech. (Plus, it was a joke!)

Yet another part of me understands that some folks’ skin is thicker than others, and I hate to think that somebody out there might be feeling shitty because of something I said for kicks, for I am not a mean-spirited guy. For that reason, I edited her name and the address of her blog out of my post.

But I keep its substance intact. The sheep may be an unwilling participant in my theological dialogue, but I think her point and my counterpoint are points of view that need to be heard, and they need to be heard back-to-back so the contrast can be made clear. I marvel at the capacity of someone to believe so strongly in something, yet not ask the obvious questions about it. Frankly, I feel like that lack of reflection by many, if not most, True Believers is my singlemost problem with religion in general.

Then I wonder if perhaps some of us weren’t destined to be sheep, and, perhaps, that’s not such a bad thing after all. I mean, the sheep obviously takes solace in her beliefs, regardless of how introspective (or not) they may be. And if it helps her to get through the day, or if it makes her a nicer or happier human being, then who am I to judge?

Still, while I admit that I might have been a little classier about how I said it, knowing that there’s a real human being with feelings and emotions on the other end, I don’t feel comfortable advocating such blind faith, in anything. I feel like any religion, philosophy, or system of thought worth its salt should be able to withstand a little scrutiny.

So, it’s Squirrel vs. Sheep, The Netiquette Wars, and somehow I've positioned myself right in the middle. Dammit, I knew I’d get into trouble once I started posting about religion.

Anyone else out there have thoughts on this? Or am I just overanalyzing a dead horse?

(PS As someone commented on Shut Yer Blog, she could have at least spelled shepherd right.)

N/P Circle – Golem

Monument to Decadence

They don’t hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our Hardees’ Monster Thickburgers. And to think—we jailed Jack Kevorkian, simply for being more efficient.

Shut Yer Blog

Favorite new blog. The byline: “Blogs suck. Nobody wants to read yer fucking diary. So just stop. God, blogs really suck.” Based entirely around a simple gimmick: for each post, self-proclaimed BlogShutter Rico the Squirrel crowns one unfortunate blog The Worst Blog of the Day, extracts a tellingly craptastic excerpt from the hapless fool, and proceeds to tear him or her a new one, ending with those three dreaded words: Shut Yer Blog.

A typical sample, from 1/8:

WORST BLOG OF THE WEEKEND
****Name & URL Redacted****


EXCERPT:

A Great Big Baaaaaa for Sheep!

Have you ever thought to yourself ~I’ve always wanted to be just like a sheep….~

Well I for one can say that I haven’t, but perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. In fact, I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that Christians are so often referred to as sheep in the bible.

Baaaaaaa...

Sheep are remarkably good at being...well….. sheep. They serve great purpose, likely beyond what they could ever understand, still they are humble and simple creatures who trust in their Shepard. A Shepard will shear his sheep and although the sheep have no understanding of why this happens- they allow it to happen. They don’t ask, “Shepard! Why must this happen to me” ...
Sheep don’t ask questions. They know what they need to, but that’s it. I’m not saying that its wrong to have questions about the bible, God, Christianity, and so on- but I know that there are some questions that aren’t meant for us as sheep to know the answer to. Sheep know what they need to know in order to live as sheep.

Perhaps we should take example from the sheep, to learn trust, faith, sacrifice, as we live our life as Christians- devoted to our Shepard. Remember, your Shepard always has your best interest at heart.

Maybe we should all give a great big Baaaaaa for sheep. They might be better Christian role models then we think.


COMMENT: Attention aspiring cult leaders: Steph is ideal for your purposes. Fries, you can't possibly top this unintentionally-hilarious-gobbledygook, so do the right thing and just leave us (we don't want any more): SHUT YER BLOG.
# posted by Rico the Squirrel @ 11:23 AM

Now I gots ta add my two cents. So much about this post just SCREAMS for derision and mockery! I generally stay away from negativity on the internets, certain political discussions excluded, but I’m quite serious about exploring the topics of spirituality and religion, and I have no time for such brain-shriveling drivel. Give me a break! I’ve never heard the pro-sheep argument made, and I’m afraid it’s a rather unconvincing one. I say: question everything. Don’t be a pathetically content sheep. And ****Name Redacted****, I’m afraid I, too, am going to have to ask you to SHUT YER BLOG.


I hope Rico the Squirrel keeps this up, cuz I can’t think of any other blog that’s ever made me laugh out loud like this before.

N/P Clinic - Winchester Cathedral

Bush’s War, The Salvadoran Option, and the Pooping Robot

I don’t post on politics nearly as much as I think about it. Part of this may be a lingering bit of election fatigue, but mostly it is because so many other blogs do it better and more consistently, like The Left End of the Dial, Daily Kos, Incoherent Blather, Talking Points Memo, and Matthew Yglesias, just to name a handful. I’m too scatterbrained to focus solely on politics, music, or anything else, for that matter; plus, I wouldn’t want to tie myself to a format in which I couldn’t point my dear reader to Robodump, the pooping robot, if that’s what happened to be on my mind that day.

I’ve grown to learn that I just don’t have the time to scrawl out a post every time I’m outraged by another news story, for in Bushworld, outrage and horror are all too commonplace.

Still, there are moments when said outrage supersedeth, and the horrors become new again. That’s what happened when I read about The Salvadoran Option now being discussed for Iraq. I’m old enough to remember the protests over Reagan’s policies in Central America, but I’m young enough that I never really understood just exactly what they were protesting.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

Exactly when do we admit that we long ago ceded the high moral ground with this godforsaken war? Certainly our unwavering Commander-in-Chief would never admit to such a thing. In the end, he always comes back to the unprovable: that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein; he did it again this week. Is it really, Mr. President? Read this and then lie to me again. What, do you think we're in kindergarten? JUST WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON??!!

This post, from the Whiskey Bar blog, is so horrifyingly thought provoking I choose to reprint it in its entirety:

Scenes From the Bunker

Mr Powell's bleak assessment, less than three weeks before Iraqis are due to elect a parliament, reflects what advisers close to the administration and former officials describe as an understanding in the State Department and Pentagon of the depth of the crisis. But, they say, this is not a view accepted by President George W. Bush . . .

According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Financial Times
Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems
January 12, 2005

Albert Speer, in charge of armament production, drew up a memorandum to Hitler on January 20 — the twelfth anniversary of Hitler's coming to power — pointing out the significance of the loss of Silesia. 'The war is lost,' his report began, and he went on in his cool and objective manner to explain why . . .

The Fuehrer, Guderian later related, glanced at Speer's report, read the first sentence and then ordered it filed away in his safe. He refused to see Speer alone, saying to Guderian: “He always has something unpleasant to say to me. I can't bear that."

William L. Shirer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1959

Need I say more? I'm certainly not saying Bush is as bad a guy as Hitler was, but his track record for handling wars is not looking much better. Apples and oranges? Perhaps.

But this war in Iraq is SO far beyond the point of being about oil or geopolitics or Vietnam or an election or saving face. For the first time, and without a hint of hyperbole, I tremble in fear that this war could actually destroy our nation as we know it.

And here I am, talking about pooping robots.

N/P The 101 – Green Street

Mummi Kutoo

When I picked Jodi up from the airport a week and a half ago, my second question, after “How was the flight?”, was “So you wanna listen to Mummi Kutoo or Pugh Rogefeldt?” It’s not all that hilarious in print, but she laughed, knowing I was poking fun at my recent predilection for obscure music sung in the artist’s native tongue (ie. not English).

Perhaps it’s just my Norse blood, but over the last two years I’ve become exceedingly fascinated by Scandinavian music. A few years ago, Parasol turned me on to Swedish rockers The Soundtrack of Our Lives, and, later, pop masterminds The Bear Quartet, among many others. Then I wandered off onto a nine-month excursion into Swedish death and Norwegian black metal, before The Great Psych Craze of ’04, in which Dungen and Circle played major roles (thank you, Aquarius).

I’ve asked myself over and over again, “Just how, exactly, did so many amazing bands come from such a relatively small region?” I have yet to find a definitive answer (though a related question gets broached here), but I continue to uncover more and more such bands, practically unknown and only now (barely) being distributed in America, who, quite simply, have blown my mind. To give credit where it’s due, it’s not really me doing the heavy legwork, it’s guys like Parasol’s Jim Kelly, Avi Roig of It’s A Trap, and, of course, the fine folks at Aquarius Records in San Francisco; I am merely the Scandinavian-loving lapdog following their lead.

Sometime in the fall of ’04, Ektro Records, the Finnish label run by Circle’s Jussi Lehtisalo issued a disc by a band called Mummi Kutoo. Little in the way of background information was provided, at least, not in English; all we knew was that it was a reissue of some Finnish folk/prog LP from the seventies. Aquarius put up a couple of sound samples and did a brief write-up:

They play a weird (and you may think wonderful) concoction of rustic folk, psychedelic rock, New Orleans jazz, honkytonk, and bluegrass...one track might be all flutes and Floyd, the next a brass band number! Quite diverse in mood and musical style. In parts, it's a bit like a countrified Dungen, if you're familiar with that current-yet-retro Swedish band.

A countrified Dungen, eh? Intrigued, I mined the sound samples and came up with gold. I immediately fired off a special order for the disc, sat back, and waited.



When it arrived in the mail, I dug in eagerly and was not disappointed. The first thing that stood out to me was actually the painting on the album’s cover. Nothing short of beautiful, it evoked the rustic beauty of Dylan’s painting on the cover of The Band’s Music From Big Pink (I almost think this had to be intentional…) Lots of liner notes (all in Finnish) and cool pics in the booklet.

Musically, I had thought the reference to “a countrified Dungen” might have been just a little too convenient, but it works rather well, albeit Dungen’s Gustav Ejstes sings in Swedish as opposed to Finnish. Like the Dungen of today, Mummi Kutoo in the seventies were an adventurous group of psychedelic genre-fuckers with ears for a melody and a playful knack for the unexpected. Utilizing mostly traditional instrumentation (acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, piano, clarinet, harmonica), their songs, generally between two and three minutes, are warm and inviting, with vocal harmonies pristine and gorgeous. If this says anything about the relative catchiness of a Mummi Kutoo song, I find myself regularly singing these songs in the shower, even though I haven’t a damn clue what I’m singing about. Rather than a frustration, though, this actually seems to add to the charm and mystique of this band.

Is there anybody out there who knows Finnish and would kindly translate this web page for me? Then I might be able to expound further on the history of this band. For now, all I can tell you is that Mummi Kutoo were around from 1973-1976 before changing their name to Suistomaan Pojat and carrying on through 1978. Of the twenty-three songs here, the first fourteen are from Mummi Kutoo's 1975 self-titled album on Love Records, and the last nine are bonus tracks from their latter incarnation. No clue what these cats are doing now. I even looked up the words “mummi”, “kutoo”, “suistomaan”, and “pojat” in several online Finnish-to-English dictionaries, with no results.

N/P Why Mummi Kutoo, of course!

America, Religion, the Donkey, and the LA Times

Mad props to NewDonkey.com for this fascinating post, “The Real Secularists,” which in turn feasts off this op-ed piece from yesterday’s LA Times: “A Nation of Faith and Religious Illiterates.” In short, it highlights the fundamental problem with the recent merger of evangelical zealotry and the machinations of the state: few Americans know enough about their own religion, much less others, to make intelligent political decisions based upon faith and faith alone.

Because additional commentary of my own would only add clutter to the discussion, I will simply extract some of the more significant statements from each:

From the original Times article:

Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.
...
In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can't be bothered to read what he has to say.
...
When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate…Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research.
...
Since 9/11, President Bush has been telling us that "Islam is a religion of peace," while evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy's son) has insisted otherwise. Who is right? Americans have no way to tell because they know virtually nothing about Islam. Such ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.
...
A few days after 9/11, a turbaned Indian American man was shot and killed in Arizona by a bigot who believed the man's dress marked him as a Muslim. But what killed Balbir Singh Sodhi (who was not a Muslim but a Sikh) was not so much bigotry as ignorance. The moral of his story is not just that we need more tolerance. It is that Americans — of both the religious and the secular variety — need to understand religion. Resolving in 2005 to read for yourself either the Bible or the Koran (or both) might not be a bad place to start.

Additional commentary from the donkey:

...
This indifference to history and doctrine definitely extends to Protestants. How many Southern Baptists know that their Convention endorsed liberalized abortion laws prior to Roe v. Wade? Or even that an ACLU-style absolutism about separation of church and state was long the most distinctive trait of their community, dating back to Roger Williams and to the early English Separatists? How many contemporary Presbyterians know that John Knox opposed the celebration of Christmas? And how many American Congregationalists really understand that the same tradition that made their community so notably progressive on issues like slavery and civil rights also made them for many decades the very fountainhead of nativist and anti-labor sentiment?
...
This is not an accident, and is not the fault of the religious rank-and-file, who are not historians or theologians, and have complicated lives to lead. But the rampant secularization of much of the American faith tradition in the not-so-sacred cause of cultural and political conservatism must be laid at the parsonage door of those religious leaders who have abused the prophetic function of their ministry to acquire a "seat at the table" of secular power.
...
In particular, Christian Right leaders in every denomination who abet and exploit the doctrinal and historical indifference of The Faithful to promote an agenda of intolerance and self-righteousness are the true Secularists of contemporary American society, and far more dangerous to the integrity of our faith communities than all the honest unbelievers in our midst or in Europe or Asia.

If you have time, read the whole article (it’s not long) and the NewDonkey’s entire post. I suppose this phenomenon of willful ignorance is one of the reasons I am drawn to writing about this topic. Makes me proud to be a member of the reality-based community.

N/P Tea and Symphony – An Asylum for the Musically Insane

Can I Get a Witness? Well, Can I?

Goddamn, ya’ll, a quick spin thru yonder blogosphere has got my head a-reelin’. I know this goes against everything I was taught in hipster school, but I’ll say it: there’s just too damn many cool peoples out there. How will I ever keep up? What to link to? What to just read? When to comment? When to shut my trap? Will I ever sleep again? Do I really need that 9-to-5? Or perhaps I’ll just take dehydrated1’s advice of yestahday: “The deeper human nature needs to breathe the precious air of liberty. Call in sick and huff yerself silly with the oxygen of the freedom.”

Firstly and fiercely, foxy digitalis rulez! Just how the hell is it that I’ve been missing out all this time??!! I can’t believe I’m only stumbling across this now, esp. when I’ve been all hellfired-up on the psychedelic tip for six months and counting! I like to think I get into some obscure shit, but this dude Brad, operating out of Red Oklahoma no less, kicks my ass from here to Albuquerque. And now my man is blogging, too. I reckon I’ll be spending a lot of time with the foxy d in the daze to come.

But not tonight. Too many places to go, too many people to see. Like Ian McKaye and George Clinton on Pancake Mountain. Unfamiliar? You GOTS to see this to believe it. Sort of a Sesame Street for the li’l indie kid.

I just read yesterday’s post over at 20 Jazz Funk Greats, jumped the hell outta my easy chair, and bum-rushed my vault of wax for The Eyeball of Hell and Cyborgs Revisited. (Inline) N/P: “Cyclotron”. Hells yeah, dirty Cleveland, old, weird Cleveland! 20JFG had me from the first line: “Just like American bloggers see European stuff as exotic and attractive we Europeans have the same mystical attraction to the American rock and roll myth.”

The Conversation All Of America Should Be Having. “An ongoing conversation between two friends. One went Left. The other went Right. Join in.” Now this is what it’s all about. It’s so easy these days to block out the beliefs and opinions of the other half of the country, that we end up living in a large echo chamber, only hearing those things which reinforce our own beliefs. Such is the downside of the New Media. But just when you think there is precious little room left for an honest dialogue these days, two guys have a conversation. (They even squeeze in a nice reference to the Velvet Underground vis-à-vis their revolutionary impact on the political scene in the former Czechoslovakia. All hail Plastic People of the Universe!) On a similar note but a larger scale, Let’s Talk America. It’s nice to see folks check their dogmas at the door and clink coffee cups with their political opposites.

Very cool extended interview with Rick Rubin in the Onion today. If you read my posts on Rubin and Cash last week (here and here), you can imagine how I’m feeling this. Lots of great anecdotes from the early days of Def Jam, back when it was little more than a glorified dorm room.

So...it’s 12:49 AM on an early Wednesday morning, and I’m crackin’ open another Pabst, knowing full well I gotta be at work in about six hours. Yikes! Dehydrated1, make me feel better! Console me...

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why don't Christians live what they preach? Hey, I didn’t say it—this is straight out of Christianity Today magazine. Makes for an interesting read, considering its source.

Come on (me), this post don’t need no commentary.

A brilliant cartoon that sums up my thoughts on Alberto Gonzalez in exactly zero words.

Here’s one for the armchair philosopher: Mihai Nadin on Anticipatory Systems. What is the difference between a falling stone and a falling cat?...I anticipate therefore I exist...What makes my life difficult is the appearance that I'm arguing against things that seem to be working fine...I'm an optimist, because I don't think that life deserves to be lived other than in a spirit of optimism...

I gotta give a shout-out to my boys on the message board at Subspace Platform Recordings. If you grew up in Peoria, Illinois, in the early-mid nineties, you’ll wanna be here.

Last but not least, thank you, Bloglines, I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Records of the Day:
Kemialliset Ystavat – Variseviev Tanssi/Silmujen Marssi
Jackie O Motherfucker – Change
Mercyful Fate – Melissa
Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary
Milton Nascimento – Journey to Dawn
Pretty Things – SF Sorrow
Zerfas – s/t
Simply Saucer – Cyborgs Revisited
Electric Eels – The Eyeball of Hell
Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place
Mark Lanegan – Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
The Lassie Foundation – Pacifico

(She’s got) Bloggability

Mike and Gwen were over last night for a nice smorgasbord of dinner, drinks, tunes, and talk. We ruminated over the idea of God, ate kabobs, and got down to Dungen, the 101, and Lo Borges. I busted out some new DVD action and gave ‘em a brief sampling of Ray Charles ca. ’64 and Can ca. ’72, before capping the evening with the Mork & Mindy pilot episode ca. ‘78. Nanoo, nanoo, beeyatch.

I was having such a good time that I temporarily forgot I had to work the next morning...fortunately I didn’t overdo the spiced rum, so I did, in fact, make it into the office today. It was nice of them to make a point to come by. With our relocation plans on the upswing (though still hazy), and Michael P. on tour for most of the next three months, I don’t know how much time I’ll get to spend with him before my girl and I leave this town in a cloud of smoke.

Link

And then there were two: mystery bloggers, that is. After reading Saturday’s post about my friend who started a blog but kept it a secret (or tried to, anyway), another good friend of mine emailed to inform me that she, too, had a secret blog (dating back nearly a year)! She actually gave me the address of hers, albeit with strict instructions: I could read it, but I could not unleash my inner promoter and call her out on this site.

Damn! Don’t you people know how difficult that is for me? What is it with these covert ops anyway? But don’t worry, Mystery Blogger #2, your secret is safe with me.

The irony of this is that both of my mystery bloggers are writing quality stuff, SO much better than 95% of the (mostly) crap you get by clicking the Next Blog button. Ah well.

So...dear readers....are there more of you out there? Who will be the next Mystery Blogger? Anonymous informants, drop me a line, and tune in tomorrow….


Tonight’s Complete Playlist:
Modest Mouse – Good News for People who Love Bad News
Heart – s/t
Death – Leprosy
Everything But the Girl – Eden
Mastodon – Leviathan
The Shaggs – Shaggs’ Own Thing
Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children
Phil Spector’s Christmas Album (a holdover from ’04)
Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Gene Vincent – Cruisin’ With Gene Vincent and the Bottle Caps
The Dillards – Live…Almost
Tyrannosaurus Rex – Beard of Stars
The Go Find – Miami
Swans – The Burning World

Bit Players of Capitalism, Unite!

I sold some records on ebay last week, and when I emailed the lucky winners, I slyly appended a link to the Unfinished Novellas in my email signature. I figured, hell, somebody picking up an LP by Brian Wilson, the Pretty Things, the Melvins, or Squarepusher might be interested in something I have to say. You know me, the gratuitously self-promoting narcissist.

I was right. This morning I received an email from the buyer of my Pretty Things – Real Pretty double LP (which conveniently features the band’s two outstanding, post-garage, psychedelic records, SF Sorrow [otherwise known as the first rock opera, predating Tommy] and Parachute in one package [I only sold it b/c I now have both records in their stand-alone incarnations]), offering up some flattering commentary on my blog, asking how long I’d been into psych music, and exclaiming how, though he’d been into it most of his life, he did not realize just how many bands there really were! (Honestly, not so long ago, neither did I.)

Bada bing, bada boom, in the blink of an eye the Anti-Rove’s friendsta list gets bumped up one. No longer mere partners in commerce and bit players in the game of capitalism, we now have at least a tangentially more meaningful connection.

Now this is what it’s really all about. Whether it’s reconnecting with old friends or meeting complete strangers who happen to share an affection for a particular musical style, record, or anything else, the web is slowly but surely binding us closer together.

Though a bit overwhelming to consider at first, I think that most of us welcome this phenomenon. Of course everyone has a need to disconnect, to get away, to hide out, to make oneself scarce from time to time; that is one dimension of human nature that will surely not change anytime soon. But the idea that one’s circle of friends need no longer be bound by the geographic limitations of, say, a small hometown in bumfuck, or by the affinities of one’s co-workers, is an enticing one indeed.

N/P Nuggets: Luke Vibert’s Selection (curious music for curious people)