I woke up early this morning, like work-day early, and i figured I’d get some listening time in. I’m still working on the last 20% or so of American Gods. Well, I guess I wasn’t really ready to be awake, because I fell back into dreamland while listening. In my dream, I was at my father’s place in Florida, with the family on a visit, I suppose. In the dream I was listening to the same audiobook, and I guess he was trying to get my attention, so I pressed stop on the player, but the words kept coming. Strange. So I pulled the earbuds out of my ears (in the dream) and the WORDS KEPT COMING. There I was, confused as to why these words kept coming from inside my ears with no player and no earbuds. After a few more dream moments of this confusion, I woke up, laughed, removed the earbuds again and was actually relieved when the words stopped in real life that time. One of those recursive dreams would have really thrown me for a loop.
Monthly Archives: January 2015
The Evens came to Fredericksburg in November 2012
I was just kind of reliving this night, playing Evens audio and videos. I never got to see Ian Mackaye during the days I was going to these shows as a young man. Minor Threat played its last show literally two months before my first, and by the time Fugazi started, I was pretty much enjoying Dead shows, Dead tribute nights, blues and world music with my circle of friends. Guess I was a fickle kid.
I was shocked when I heard that the Evens (Ian on guitar, Amy Farina on drums, and both on vocals) were coming to the Burg. The show was in a tiny little bookstore, Read All Over Bookstore, right smack in the heart of downtown Fredericksburg. No wait. It’s a tiny little store, but it’s large for a tiny bookstore. The show was sponsored by Fredericksburg All Ages, which is appropriate, because Ian has been a tireless advocate for all ages venues.
I spent the whole gig just ten feet from the stage. A kid was crawling around the stage for a while, I’m guessing that was Ian and Amy’s son. A guy was filming the show with what looked like a serious camera. I chatted with him on the sidewalk after the show, he was from OddBox in Fredericksburg. Ever since the show I’ve been hoping to see the footage surface somewhere, but no such luck just yet. There was a real nice version of Mt. Pleasant Isn’t. It’s a favorite due to the sing-along chorus: “THE POLICE WILL NOT BE EXCUSED! THE POLICE WILL NOT BEHAVE!” Here’s a version from some other gig, since I can’t post the one I saw:
I hope I can bring my girls to an upcoming Fredericksburg All Ages show. Problem is, a lot of time they’re held on school nights, and my girls have stacks and stacks of homework, and they’re always so tired so early. They aren’t miscreant ne’er-do-wells like I was, making my way from the suburbs into DC sometimes twice a week to see shows like this at 930, DC Space, Roxy, WUST, Pierce Hall, or wherever they were being held that week.
Pizza Dare
I think the fairly recent trend of “Pizza Dare” videos, in which women order pizza and then answer the door naked, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, is a scam.
I think it’s a full-scale, all-out scam, orchestrated by the pizza delivery industry, in order to convince men, most of whom do not feel they get to see their share of naked women, to take the job at whatever low hourly wages are offered, hell, even for free, on the off chance that they’ll get to experience a live naked girl answering the door.
Also, there’s a double standard at play here. If *I* do it, I’ll have to register as a sex offender. Women almost NEVER get arrested for indecent exposure. Go figure.
This obsession I have with the past…
Sometimes I wonder if I’m obsessed with the past. My father likes to say, “sometimes the past should stay in the past.” Sometimes, when people are uncomfortable with the past, there are demons back there lurking, or maybe what they’re really uncomfortable with is the present, represented by their own linear progress.
Except there’s no such thing as linear progress. It’s a myth. We walk our own road, we do our own time. Anyone tries to tell you different is a liar.
The past can’t be ignored. It’s directly connected to the present, and the future. Re-examining the past with the eyes of experience, you’re likely to learn new lessons that may have been missed the first time around. You just never know what might be buried in there. Maybe it floated right by you when you weren’t paying attention.
One of the ways I’m reconnecting with the past is by re-releasing material from my old Krylon Underground archives. Feel free to connect on facebook for periodic releases of “stuff” — artwork, poetic indulgences, satire, whatever strikes my fancy, as I get around to it. Most of it is not written or drawn by me. I was more of a collector, and towards the end I had quite a collection of submissions mailed to me from friends and strangers.
Here’s a good example. It’s a long piece from what I believe is the last printed copy of Krylon Underground in 1992.
Joni Fan
Somewhere near my home is a fellow Joni fan. I will allow myself a mild case of tunnel vision in assuming this refers to Joni Mitchell. Because to my knowledge, there is no other Joni that can be referred to as simply Joni.
I can’t remember my first exposures to Joni. I was too young. I remember buying The Hissing of Summer Lawns, though, on vinyl at a yard sale in my late teens. I remember it because I also bought a few Jethro Tull albums at the same time. I still have them all, including the version of Stand Up with the band popping out of the album when you open it.
My early exposure to Joni probably included Big Yellow Taxi and Help Me, because I grew up on 70s popular radio. Hissing was the first in-depth exposure to Joni I ever had, and it floored me. I couldn’t believe there were so many great songs I had never heard, all in one place. I listened many, many times. I still know the record by heart. I had never heard anything like The Jungle Line before. Edith and the Kingpin still gives me goosebumps today.
Not having a guide, I explored some of Joni’s other works as I happened upon them. Court and Spark and Ladies of the Canyon, while obviously great albums, never quite resonated with me the way that Hissing did, although I still smile when I hear Joni’s version of Woodstock, which I sometimes prefer to CSNY’s cover. Sometimes. Depends on my energy at the time, I guess.
Then I met Eve, who introduced me to Hejira and reintroduced me to Blue. Blue, which I had heard before and just not given a fair listen. Blue, which I probably just wasn’t mature enough to hear the first time. Blue, which has some of the greatest songs Joni ever wrote. How did I miss that? And Hejira, wow. Hejira had me at the very first listen. By the time I had found Hejira, I had already found Furry Lewis, so Furry Sings the Blues resonated powerfully. Coyote, Amelia, and Black Crow were just icing on the cake. Perfect gems of powerful, lyrical icing. I’d put Hejira on my 10-album desert island list any day.
So thanks, fellow JONI FAN, for making me think of Joni on the way home tonight. Even though I was listening to American Gods, I was thinking of you. Perhaps you too are an American God incarnate.
If your day just isn’t weird enough…
http://heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa.com/
I’d like to thank the Plurals of Baltimore for bringing this to my attention.
My Little Pony Sex Toys? Or American Gods?
Let’s go with American Gods for $1,000, Alex.
I wanted, desperately wanted, to dedicate a post to My Little Pony sex toys. I really did. Because apparently there’s a larger-than-life inflatable Rainbow Dash love doll available, for those who aren’t ashamed to own such a thing. There’s also a plush Lyra Heartstrings with a receptacle sewn in, if you think there’s anything at all socially redeemable about such a thing.
I also desperately want to believe that more than 90% of Brony culture is ironic in nature. I try to remain free of judgement, tolerant of all cultural choices, and encouraging of diversity, but there’s a tiny part of me that believes you should seek therapy if you can get it up for either of these.
So, on to American Gods, because it’s far more important, because it’s literature, honest to goodness literature that causes a person to think and perceive and exercise a muscle other than the penis. I’ll try not to subtract points for being written about America by an Englishman. I mean, fuck it, Nick Cave does it, and he’s fucking Australian.
In American Gods, Shadow, in prison for doing something stupid, is about to be released when he discovered his wife has been killed. He’s released a couple of days early, and encounters his first fascinating stranger on the way home.
Always watch out for those strangers, especially the ones that seem to know too much about you.
The book seems to take Aleister Crowley’s polytheism to a literal extreme, portraying various gods as inhabiting physical entities in an effort to recruit him for work. Seems the god business is suffering a bit in the current climate.
I’m not finished with the story yet, but my favorite moment so far is when the television god inhabits Lucille Ball during an I Love Lucy rerun, and begins to unbutton her blouse, offering Shadow a peek. “C’mon, haven’t you ever wanted to see Lucy’s tits?”
By the way, according to the internet, they’re available.
I’m relieved that American Gods is so much more solid than Fragile Things, and understandably so. It’s meant to be a work that stands on its own, as opposed to Fragile Things, which never claimed to be anything more than a stew of leftovers and shells. I suspect I was correct about it being the wrong first exposure to Neil’s work. But it was still very engaging and entertaining.
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Recurring Dream: Airships taking planes out of the sky
Have you ever experienced a recurring dream that morphs over time into a different outcome? I woke this morning from one of my recurring dreams.
In the past, I would hear a loud engine noise from the sky and see either an unfamiliar aircraft flying in patterns unsupported by known, existing craft, only to lose control and then crash, leading me to awaken with a sense of despair which can be related to witnessing a disaster.
Sometimes, rather than crashing itself, the strange craft would take out a traditional aircraft appropriate to our place an dtime. Again, despair and disaster.
This time, however, apparently the unidentified craft has improved technology. The first thing I heard was the sound. It was not unlike multiple transport helicopters flying low overhead — a heavy drone with deep undertones. I looked up, and soon realized it was an unidentifiable craft which first appeared to be in some large rectangular shape. In my dream, I went and got a camera and began photographing from my patio window.
It made several passes, starting out quite distant from my vantage point, and then making closer passes. I was able to get multiple photos. At one point the craft seemed to have “captured” a plane. Another pass, it seemed to be carrying a blimp.
In my dream, I didn’t get around to taking a closer look at the photos I had captured in order to draw them from memory. I had to put the camera down to deal with things that were going on in the house, and then I woke. Instead of a sense of despair, I woke with a sense of apprehension, as in the dream, I had realized that They, whoever They were, likely knew I had photos, and might have a problem with that.
The soundtrack throughout the dream was Radiohead, culminating in Subterranean Homesick Alien. Appropriately spooky?
The very last scene prior to waking, probably unrelated, was looking out my window to see folks sunning themselves by a riverside. In January.
Angel or Devil?
I’ve got a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil side is Gawker. Those damned Gawker articles. They are compelling, but they are almost always about the worst things that happen. Gawker: Always compelling, rarely uplifting.
The angel is Dangerous Minds. I don’t like the idea of reposting content posted by others, but this time, I’m going to side with the angel, because the angel is in my head and can read my thoughts.
If you’re not following Dangerous Minds, you really, really should. This alone should be enough of a reason to do so.
A Few Tunes Between Homicides: Never Before Released Song by Leadbelly
There’s also an amazing video “newsreel” feature of Leadbelly. If you’ve ever listened to Leadbelly singing Midnight Special, or Rock Island Line, or Gallows Pole, you owe it to yourself to check out these two pieces.
Gearing up for One More Saturday Night…
(and a Friday, and a Sunday). My manager came into my office on Friday, and said, “I guess I know what YOU’RE doing on July 4.” I didn’t. I hadn’t heard. I had heard that an announcement was coming, but the ripple effect hadn’t quite reached me yet. “What?” Then he told me the Dead had made their announcement.
One last time, three nights at Soldier Field in Chicago. July 3, 4 and 5 of this year. Then that’s it. No more. Final. Nice way to close out fifty years of playing. Not quite as grueling for the band members, who are getting on in years, as a full tour.
Somehow my passion must be infectious, because I got the go ahead at home, and my ticket requests are in the mail! I had Sabina help me with decorating the envelopes, a decades-old Dead tradition. Did you know that there has been a scholarly paper done on Dead fan envelope art? Fascinating. You can check it out here: Uses for Fan Envelopes from the Grateful Dead Archive as Digital and Traditional Primary Research Sources.
There is a certain “Great Pumpkin” feel to it. You hope that the effort put forth in your envelope decoration will be rewarded with the ticket(s) you seek. The reality is, we don’t know if we’ll get tickets for any of the three nights, much less all three. But today’s the first day for mail-order postmarks, and mine are in there with everyone else’s, so I like to think we’ve at least got a fair shot.
I went, with this same manager, to State College, PA in 2008 to see them at the Change Rocks show. Then I went to two of the shows during the 2009 reunion tour — I took Sophie to see them in Charlottesville, and Eve came up to Philly with me to see them just a few months before the Rectum, errr, Spectrum got demolished.
So yeah. Add that to all the times I saw them in the 80s and 90s (RFK, Cap Centre, Three Rivers Stadium, Madison Square Garden, etc), and yeah. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.