Been busy and/or out of town recently. Anyway, a brief rundown of recently acquired noise to satisfy my ravenous fans. Hi, Fred. On we go:
Elvis Costello The Delivery Man - The lazy point of comparison here is King of America: largely southern US points of influence, some famous American names guesting (in this case, Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams), etc. I just picked this up and have only had the chance to hear it once. First listen usually serves to establish only a general direction (rawks-ward, sux-ward) with me, subject to much change later. Good so far.
Bjork Medulla - I'm too lazy for them thar furriner letters. As always, the first few listens are spent going, whah-huh? in terms of sonic texture. That's all the further I've got so far.
Robyn Hitchcock Spooked - I had low expectations for this one - he's neither trying to set things on fire anymore, nor generally doing so - but this one's growing on me. As most Robyn fans know, this one features David Rawlings and Gillian Welch on instruments and singing, but it's no twangfest, nor is it egregiously folky in that NPR way. Instead, we get some very nice vocal and acoustic-guitar interplay on a set of generally subdued but very pretty songs. Order early direct from Yep Roc, get a free CD-R of two more (quite fine) songs.
The Chameleons (UK) Strange Times - I picked this up because, for some reason, I feel compelled to hear things that people say are really who Interpol should be compared to, instead of the cliched (and wholly wrong) Joy Division. This was someone's nominee - I forget who. I can sorta hear it, but to me these guys inhabit a somewhat related but quite distinct world, maybe a few streets over and a couple blocks down from Interpol.
Echo & the Bunnymen Crocodiles (reissue) - The new material doesn't really add much for me; live, Mac had an annoying tendency to riff verbally on little word spasms that, on record, don't really do much (there are four live tracks appended). The studio outtakes and demoes prove that good decisions were made about which tracks made the final album. But damn - McCulloch was self-assured for a singer who'd barely performed before, and the band just hit hard and had great ideas. Lyrics a bit sketchy (probably better than "pretentious," though), and you can tell they kinda wrote the same song a couple of times in places...but "All That Jazz," for example, does just about everything right.
[v/a] Old Enough to Know Better: 15 Years of Merge Records - Which pretty much establishes how great a label Merge is. I had lots of this - but I also didn't have lots of this, and with three CDs for the price of one (including a whole disc full of not readily available stuff), there's no good reason not to buy this.
The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads - Apparently I'm into the reissue thing these last few weeks. While some of the added tracks on the first disc are a bit compromised sonically, they still add to the picture, and that picture is of one very hot, very confident band that turned their quirks into strengths with every step. And way more credit should be given to Tina Weymouth: since Byrne and Harrison played almost entirely rhythm, it was left to her not only to perform the usual harmonic underpinning of the bass player but also to flesh out the songs with countermelodies. "Found a Job" is the epitome of her early style. The second disc, which now restores the entire 80-81 touring set list, is just plain shit-hot, the band feeling exploratory and restless rather than (as later happened with some of Byrne's work) either garishly and newly tried-on or overpolished.
I think that's it - bye now.
9.26.2004
9.22.2004
last words on Bush and National Guard duties
1. CBS fucked up, yes - but that has nothing to do with the underlying truth of the forged document's claims.
2. Here's E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post (unfortunately, you have to register), noting that, for Republicans, "the Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off." If it's relevant for Kerry, it's relevant for Bush.
3. And here, from Eric Boehlert in Salon, is a compendium of inconsistencies, omissions, and lies in Bush's statements about his Guard service. If Bush had nothing to hide, he could clear them up, instantly. He doesn't. Draw your own conclusions.
It should go without saying that Bush's dishonesty and incompetence in Iraq are far more important, and germane, than his dishonesty and incompetence in the Guard thirty years ago.
2. Here's E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post (unfortunately, you have to register), noting that, for Republicans, "the Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off." If it's relevant for Kerry, it's relevant for Bush.
3. And here, from Eric Boehlert in Salon, is a compendium of inconsistencies, omissions, and lies in Bush's statements about his Guard service. If Bush had nothing to hide, he could clear them up, instantly. He doesn't. Draw your own conclusions.
It should go without saying that Bush's dishonesty and incompetence in Iraq are far more important, and germane, than his dishonesty and incompetence in the Guard thirty years ago.
9.17.2004
good thing I wasn't her business ethics teacher
As a teacher, I always find it rewarding to hear about the success of former students. Well, almost always: here's one who succeeded in finding her way to a small room with barred windows.
9.15.2004
R.I.P. Johnny Ramone
Sadly, I originally wrote this a couple years back: recycling Ramones tributes is only too appropriate.
And in the Garden of Concrete in that day there did dwell a serpent, a creature most subtle and tasteful among all creatures, who did call out to lo the many sons of Ramone, numbering amongst them those who were called Joey, and Dee Dee, and Johnny, and Tommy, and didst say unto them; "Gabba gabba yea I say unto you, wherefore dost thou hold always thy fingers in the same positions upon thy instruments of strings; and wherefore also dost thou play always upon thy instrument of hitting in always the same manner; and never to play in any other manner upon thy instruments, neither varying nor changing thy 'groove,' as the kids call it these days?"
And Johnny didst speak therefore; and said he unto the serpent: that the LORD himself had said unto them that of all the chords of the guitar, they shalt know only the three, and that they shall knoweth not of the fourth chord; and that of the drum they shalt know only of the beat, and never yet knoweth of the fill. And Tommy did say, "Huh?"; and Joey did beateth upon the brats with the bat of basehitting; and the wily serpent did tempt them, yea even unto the mysteries of the fourth chord, and the drum fill, and the chaos that ariseth thereof; and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the Garden of Concrete; and lo their innocence was cast out, and their days thenceforth spent in restless sleeping, and their nights in fearsome noisemaking, and eating of chicken vindaloo; yet no longer couldst they rock.
And the serpent bought a real nice suit.
And in the Garden of Concrete in that day there did dwell a serpent, a creature most subtle and tasteful among all creatures, who did call out to lo the many sons of Ramone, numbering amongst them those who were called Joey, and Dee Dee, and Johnny, and Tommy, and didst say unto them; "Gabba gabba yea I say unto you, wherefore dost thou hold always thy fingers in the same positions upon thy instruments of strings; and wherefore also dost thou play always upon thy instrument of hitting in always the same manner; and never to play in any other manner upon thy instruments, neither varying nor changing thy 'groove,' as the kids call it these days?"
And Johnny didst speak therefore; and said he unto the serpent: that the LORD himself had said unto them that of all the chords of the guitar, they shalt know only the three, and that they shall knoweth not of the fourth chord; and that of the drum they shalt know only of the beat, and never yet knoweth of the fill. And Tommy did say, "Huh?"; and Joey did beateth upon the brats with the bat of basehitting; and the wily serpent did tempt them, yea even unto the mysteries of the fourth chord, and the drum fill, and the chaos that ariseth thereof; and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the Garden of Concrete; and lo their innocence was cast out, and their days thenceforth spent in restless sleeping, and their nights in fearsome noisemaking, and eating of chicken vindaloo; yet no longer couldst they rock.
And the serpent bought a real nice suit.
9.14.2004
sigh...
"George W. Bush has a record the Democrats should have made mincemeat of. Right about now, the media should be writing, and American voters should be thinking: Golly, a million jobs lost, millions more in poverty, manufacturing down; no WMD's, 1,000-plus dead, Iraq on the brink of civil war, al-Qaeda larger than ever and still recruiting, acts of worldwide terrorism on the rise, North Korea and Iran responding to the cowboy routine by going nuclear. This should have been easy." --Michael Tomasky
Why hasn't it been? Because too many of us apparently think we're voting for who gets to stand heroically in the flag-rippling breeze, rather than who gets to be President.
Why hasn't it been? Because too many of us apparently think we're voting for who gets to stand heroically in the flag-rippling breeze, rather than who gets to be President.
9.12.2004
The Presidential Campaign Reimagined as a Function of Musical Taste (Or Lack Thereof)
So here's this story, describing a recording by the band that the young John Kerry was in in high school. After reading it, the light went on, and I finally figured out what's wrong with Kerry's campaign: he's running it like a bass player. He's steadily plonking along, not drawing too much attention to himself...but no one except wonks really pays any attention to what the bass player is doing.
George Bush, on the other hand, is running his campaign rather like, oh, Doc Severinsen or somebody: shrill, blasting, unmusical and showboating shriekingly high trumpet notes that thrill the denizens of mall-based record stores, even though whether those notes are in tune, are at all tasteful, or belong there in the first place doesn't seem to bother him at all.
George Bush, on the other hand, is running his campaign rather like, oh, Doc Severinsen or somebody: shrill, blasting, unmusical and showboating shriekingly high trumpet notes that thrill the denizens of mall-based record stores, even though whether those notes are in tune, are at all tasteful, or belong there in the first place doesn't seem to bother him at all.
9.10.2004
update from Conspiracy Central
Something's very stinky about the Killian Memo scandal. First, the doubts raised by Bushies about the document (proportional spacing rather than monospacing; superscripted "th" in "111th"; use of Times New Roman) do seem serious for a document purportedly produced by a typewriter in the 1970s.
However, they seem so very obvious that it's not hard to imagine a Rovean scheme underlying their existence, to wit: some Bushies whip up a document that, at first blush, seems to indict their man. It's passed to CBS who, sensing a scoop, perform up to sadly predictable journalistic standards (there's way too much check-free echo-chambering: just ask Negativland) and run with the story without verifying it. Of course, CBS claims to have experts who've vetted and approved the document - but where are they? Let's imagine the document is demonstrated to have been faked. Well, who faked it? You can bet the Bush team will call in all of their considerable bogus-association powers into play (as seen in the 9/11-Iraq non-relationship)...not directly, of course...and imply that Kerry is somehow behind this blatant attempt to smear Bush's reputation.
You'll notice that the media focus seems to be on the authenticity of the document...and not on the manifest truth that no one has been able to prove Bush was where he was supposed to be.
And of course, the whole thing is, like the Swift Boat brouhaha, a complete distraction from Bush's actual record of failure as president.
However, they seem so very obvious that it's not hard to imagine a Rovean scheme underlying their existence, to wit: some Bushies whip up a document that, at first blush, seems to indict their man. It's passed to CBS who, sensing a scoop, perform up to sadly predictable journalistic standards (there's way too much check-free echo-chambering: just ask Negativland) and run with the story without verifying it. Of course, CBS claims to have experts who've vetted and approved the document - but where are they? Let's imagine the document is demonstrated to have been faked. Well, who faked it? You can bet the Bush team will call in all of their considerable bogus-association powers into play (as seen in the 9/11-Iraq non-relationship)...not directly, of course...and imply that Kerry is somehow behind this blatant attempt to smear Bush's reputation.
You'll notice that the media focus seems to be on the authenticity of the document...and not on the manifest truth that no one has been able to prove Bush was where he was supposed to be.
And of course, the whole thing is, like the Swift Boat brouhaha, a complete distraction from Bush's actual record of failure as president.
9.08.2004
peevalicious
Random complaint mode on:
What is it with public restrooms whose management insists on setting the faucets so that they automatically turn off after, like, half a second unless you hold them on? What's the point of that? Do these people have three hands, so they can wash their hands while also holding the water on? So we have to resort to alternating very wet, soapy hands under the water and holding the faucet on, thereby creating a much messier sink. And if the motivation is to save water, this method's inefficiency probably ends up using more water.
Or perhaps they bear a grudge against the health department, and want to discourage people from washing their hands?
On the other hand, while I appreciate that encouraging folks to wash their hands is sound public health, it seems a bit odd that public restrooms have been sprouting instructions on how to wash. There are people out there who don't know how to wash their own hands?
Some of the instructions are pretty amusing though. For example, a Starbucks* near campus has a restroom with hand-washing instructions that terminate not with the usual "dry" step, but with the added proviso that hands should be dried before turning off the faucet, and that we should "Use towel to turn off faucet." Okay, yes: when you turn on the faucet, your hands are dirty...so touching it again after you've cleaned your hand runs the risk of getting it "dirty" again...but c'mon, who wrote this, Howard Hughes? "Encase entire body in latex. Do not leave the house."
* It's connected to a local bookstore, and the two businesses share restrooms. So don't worry: I'm not contributing to The Beast.
What is it with public restrooms whose management insists on setting the faucets so that they automatically turn off after, like, half a second unless you hold them on? What's the point of that? Do these people have three hands, so they can wash their hands while also holding the water on? So we have to resort to alternating very wet, soapy hands under the water and holding the faucet on, thereby creating a much messier sink. And if the motivation is to save water, this method's inefficiency probably ends up using more water.
Or perhaps they bear a grudge against the health department, and want to discourage people from washing their hands?
On the other hand, while I appreciate that encouraging folks to wash their hands is sound public health, it seems a bit odd that public restrooms have been sprouting instructions on how to wash. There are people out there who don't know how to wash their own hands?
Some of the instructions are pretty amusing though. For example, a Starbucks* near campus has a restroom with hand-washing instructions that terminate not with the usual "dry" step, but with the added proviso that hands should be dried before turning off the faucet, and that we should "Use towel to turn off faucet." Okay, yes: when you turn on the faucet, your hands are dirty...so touching it again after you've cleaned your hand runs the risk of getting it "dirty" again...but c'mon, who wrote this, Howard Hughes? "Encase entire body in latex. Do not leave the house."
* It's connected to a local bookstore, and the two businesses share restrooms. So don't worry: I'm not contributing to The Beast.
9.06.2004
sleepy kisses
How is it that certain letters of the alphabet are "cooler" than others? In the names of expensive, fast cars, of fancy electronic gimmicks, and in the call letters of rock radio stations, some letters are more equal than others. In rough order from most to less cool, those letters are X, Z, and maybe Q. So why is that? For one thing, as any Scrabble player knows, they're relatively rare - and thereby less evocative of their humble status as mere letters of the alphabet. Perhaps, in the case of the indubitably cool X and Z, it's that bold angularity, the stark geometry. Except that turn a Z on its side, and you have an N - nothing cool about that. Or about a lower-case t, for that matter. Probably the best answer is that both letters carry a connotation of mystery, a je ne sais quoi: an algebraic unknown, the end of the alphabetic line, something vaguely exotic in both letters. And both are, in a sense, outsiders: Z was an orphan for several hundred years, left behind with the Greeks as the Romans rose and only allowed to rejoin the alphabet in the first century BCE. And X has no real phonetic role, but somehow has hung on despite that lack.
9.01.2004
first anniversary Burroughsian clip-show
Made up entirely of phrases gleaned from the first year's worth of entries, in order, and dressed up, in the manner of small girls in their mothers' ball gowns, as found poetry:
the vast electronic ether crusted and frozen over
to call into being a still point
thoughtlessly flagwaving anything more important than a laundromat
I think I'll shave my head I am such a geek
the Sun Kings of their own blinkered solar systems
between admiration and a fit of the giggles
I'm on a campaign against "excitement"
rejiggered the punctuation, there might be only one Roger
Bambi, flowers, and babies petting puppies
despondent, near-mumbling, a mediagenic, musclebound, grinning ape
medical science should be alerted immediately
we're singing about a goddamned snowman
blatant jimmying of the chordal rigging
pointing at pre-approved thought-wardrobes
the glory of outsider cool who sneers at the mundane
a sonically upgraded world
suspend our disbelief by a narrow thread from a scraggly twig
sixty feet up a sheer cliff wall
the words written in (someone else's) blood above the door:
"Roxanne is with another client right now"
a sort of crude crayon sketch of a Gibsonian cybermatrix
the wrong lyric is more interesting than the right one
Who the fuck are you?
phrases suddenly flock forth
I'd pay to see a rhyme-off
water accused of being wet,
a philosophy which then colonizes a rhetorical bad-hair day
to have odd little acoustical spaces to themselves,
a claque of fans who haunt the bookstores
no texture to a nine-digit number
one can't walk anywhere in public without being hit over the head
crudeness for its own sake
maintain my coolness in several vectors simultaneously
Dictionaries are dangerous and addictive
"let's play 'count the white people'"
what color is your panic chute?
guilty of dumbing-down jawdroppingly channels the Captain
designers and architects fan out
eyebrow-raisers are frequent sheer accidental beauty
send that camel to a chiropractor
bearing coded transmissions of the most ponderous import
the organization of that name got snitty
the casting coup of the century, the amusing editing glitch
The doughty plantsman wrestles a certain dubious hipness
broken hearts and major-seventh chords
a yahoo who laughs at gags Adam made up
under suspicion of containing encoded references
that hand gesture designating tastiness
National Den Mother not a particularly portable phenomenon
fonts are designed, not found beneath a rock
we want to make our tastes bear an excessive burden
of signification skritching its paws in a litterbox
a bit ruder:
operas in which illicit narcotics vocalize a precision-balanced sense of ambiguity
"Are you from Milwaukee? Do you wanna marry me?"
intentionally awful, that famous breakfast craze:
Buddy Squirrel and Mr. Peanut work cryptic kabala with the cashews
embarrass ravenously feeding wolves
snap it off and hang it from my belt fitted out with random place names
you're not a vacuum cleaner, certified irony-free suburb who twisted my arm
contemporary critical grape-peeling becoming fidgety
bombarded with the usual well-meaning civic-mindedness plus: one (1) goat
I bought an accordion to prevent knee injuries before they happen
a certain metaphysical vagueness, utter contempt for everything
dress it in the rationality of mathematical relationships
they swarm around truth
like thousands of piranha translate their trembling
no digits involved
let loose this whopper
kind of dims that nostalgic glow some more
weird bugs translates the abstraction of death into emotional legibility
left-field song-jimmiers
nasty editorial pawprints off acknowledging one's own assholity
the beneficiary of allergists' fond attentions in a special homage to Andy Warhol
second verse, history as farce
our boy-king originally from Indiana
probably gravity wouldn't work right
Ronnie hasn't risen up out of his tomb
the cats were completely still
dismissed as unduly paranoid
the lack of postal service shot through with a conceptual brilliance
that matryushka of prepositional phrases
the sad pick-up joints of his town's abandoned warehouse district
mincemeat of Rush's bloviations: I blame it all on Sammy Hagar
Whoa. I need another bong hit.
spraying gasoline at a raging fire
some sunscreen probably would have been a good idea
the odds favor Elvis to puckishly quote one lack of proofreading skill
its opening haze pungent statement:
it was the Clinton administration, the band's guitarist, and a computer aura
and cobbled the astonishing number of flaws,
beer-drinking gnomic cutup man
bog down immediately in reason and practicality
the space surrounding their bodies must be handled like nitroglycerin
less wonkish readers gasping for air to weasel their way out of it
tempted to find its source
a rash of properly formed apostrophes
a collector of evocative phrases
grievous policy blunder try to claim this election
what the sign painter was thinking
meditation of sorts:
how much I suck goddamn juvenile delinquent elephants
the tumbling of those similar consonants
harmful doses of outrage tucked in an inside window
the vast electronic ether crusted and frozen over
to call into being a still point
thoughtlessly flagwaving anything more important than a laundromat
I think I'll shave my head I am such a geek
the Sun Kings of their own blinkered solar systems
between admiration and a fit of the giggles
I'm on a campaign against "excitement"
rejiggered the punctuation, there might be only one Roger
Bambi, flowers, and babies petting puppies
despondent, near-mumbling, a mediagenic, musclebound, grinning ape
medical science should be alerted immediately
we're singing about a goddamned snowman
blatant jimmying of the chordal rigging
pointing at pre-approved thought-wardrobes
the glory of outsider cool who sneers at the mundane
a sonically upgraded world
suspend our disbelief by a narrow thread from a scraggly twig
sixty feet up a sheer cliff wall
the words written in (someone else's) blood above the door:
"Roxanne is with another client right now"
a sort of crude crayon sketch of a Gibsonian cybermatrix
the wrong lyric is more interesting than the right one
Who the fuck are you?
phrases suddenly flock forth
I'd pay to see a rhyme-off
water accused of being wet,
a philosophy which then colonizes a rhetorical bad-hair day
to have odd little acoustical spaces to themselves,
a claque of fans who haunt the bookstores
no texture to a nine-digit number
one can't walk anywhere in public without being hit over the head
crudeness for its own sake
maintain my coolness in several vectors simultaneously
Dictionaries are dangerous and addictive
"let's play 'count the white people'"
what color is your panic chute?
guilty of dumbing-down jawdroppingly channels the Captain
designers and architects fan out
eyebrow-raisers are frequent sheer accidental beauty
send that camel to a chiropractor
bearing coded transmissions of the most ponderous import
the organization of that name got snitty
the casting coup of the century, the amusing editing glitch
The doughty plantsman wrestles a certain dubious hipness
broken hearts and major-seventh chords
a yahoo who laughs at gags Adam made up
under suspicion of containing encoded references
that hand gesture designating tastiness
National Den Mother not a particularly portable phenomenon
fonts are designed, not found beneath a rock
we want to make our tastes bear an excessive burden
of signification skritching its paws in a litterbox
a bit ruder:
operas in which illicit narcotics vocalize a precision-balanced sense of ambiguity
"Are you from Milwaukee? Do you wanna marry me?"
intentionally awful, that famous breakfast craze:
Buddy Squirrel and Mr. Peanut work cryptic kabala with the cashews
embarrass ravenously feeding wolves
snap it off and hang it from my belt fitted out with random place names
you're not a vacuum cleaner, certified irony-free suburb who twisted my arm
contemporary critical grape-peeling becoming fidgety
bombarded with the usual well-meaning civic-mindedness plus: one (1) goat
I bought an accordion to prevent knee injuries before they happen
a certain metaphysical vagueness, utter contempt for everything
dress it in the rationality of mathematical relationships
they swarm around truth
like thousands of piranha translate their trembling
no digits involved
let loose this whopper
kind of dims that nostalgic glow some more
weird bugs translates the abstraction of death into emotional legibility
left-field song-jimmiers
nasty editorial pawprints off acknowledging one's own assholity
the beneficiary of allergists' fond attentions in a special homage to Andy Warhol
second verse, history as farce
our boy-king originally from Indiana
probably gravity wouldn't work right
Ronnie hasn't risen up out of his tomb
the cats were completely still
dismissed as unduly paranoid
the lack of postal service shot through with a conceptual brilliance
that matryushka of prepositional phrases
the sad pick-up joints of his town's abandoned warehouse district
mincemeat of Rush's bloviations: I blame it all on Sammy Hagar
Whoa. I need another bong hit.
spraying gasoline at a raging fire
some sunscreen probably would have been a good idea
the odds favor Elvis to puckishly quote one lack of proofreading skill
its opening haze pungent statement:
it was the Clinton administration, the band's guitarist, and a computer aura
and cobbled the astonishing number of flaws,
beer-drinking gnomic cutup man
bog down immediately in reason and practicality
the space surrounding their bodies must be handled like nitroglycerin
less wonkish readers gasping for air to weasel their way out of it
tempted to find its source
a rash of properly formed apostrophes
a collector of evocative phrases
grievous policy blunder try to claim this election
what the sign painter was thinking
meditation of sorts:
how much I suck goddamn juvenile delinquent elephants
the tumbling of those similar consonants
harmful doses of outrage tucked in an inside window
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