A classic. This is my Charlie Brown special, my Detroit Lions blowout, and my cranberry sauce with visible grooves from the can, all wrapped into one.
Don't worry, I won't post 'The Junky's Christmas' a month from now.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Between the Lines - Flagpole "Athens Rising" Nov. 3rd
Oh, Flagpole. How I’ve missed Elaine Ely’s column ‘Miscellany,’ (the title was a pun: Miss Elaine E., get it?). For those of you who missed its brief two-month run, Miscellany was a public journal of Athens arts and culture (culture as something you buy, something that costs a lot of money—preferably something you can eat or drink, art as something that you are very much interested in as an accessory to your glamorous lifestyle) written by a wealthy person who had just moved to Athens from a big city, and wish we had just a little more culture—as defined above—and art, and was prepared to tell us where we could find it. More often than not, it was at the bottom of a wine glass.
Normally Kevan Williams writes F-pole’s ‘Athens Rising’ column. He muses on all the ways our city planning could be more effective/responsible etc. There’s some good ideas in it from time to time. This week’s column was written by a gentleman named Dan Lorentz.
So tell us about yourself Dan.
When my wife and I came to Athens about three years ago, we fell in love with Boulevard and its proximity to downtown from the start and bought a house located in the middle of the neighborhood on Lyndon Avenue. But almost as soon as we finished moving in, I started dreaming of a neighborhood grocery store.
What an interesting dream, Dan. I have a reucurring dream that involves riding a school bus as it speeds towards this huge gap in the road that it has to jump across. Sometimes I’m eating a box of donuts in this dream. Sometimes there’s a large man dressed in a bunny suit sitting on my lap. But you dream of neighborhood grocery stores. That’s cool. By the way, have you ever been to the Daily Co-op?
In every other city we’ve lived in, we’ve been able to walk to a decent-sized grocery store—and I had gotten accustomed to that.
Well sure, Dan. But there’s tradeoffs to everything, isn’t there? And I guess buying a house in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in town, within walking distance to downtown, outweighs being able to walk to a decent-sized grocery store. That did factor into your decision, right? Oh, and Dan? You probably already noticed this, but 200 days out of the year, it totally sucks to walk around outside in Athens.
So I began daydreaming of a grocery store. I found a great location for one just a block from my house in a big parking lot at the corner of Chase Street and Dubose Avenue—kitty-corner from Chase Street Elementary School.
Only one block from your house? That’s pretty fucking convenient, Dan. But it is your dream, I guess.
And it had a name: Green Thrift Grocery.
The worst name for a dream grocery store ever—assuming there aren’t any dream grocery stores with the words ‘pus,’ ‘cum bubble,’ or ‘excrement’ in their name.
While it would be a small-format store—just 10,000 square feet (considerably smaller than, say, the 50,000-plus-square-foot Kroger on Alps Road)—it would be full-service. At Green Thrift, you’d be able to get fresh, locally grown foods in season and pretty much everything else a conventional store has to offer (even if there’d be slightly fewer choices), including beer and wine.
You think your store’s going to sell beer and wine? Not kitty-corner from Chase Street elementary it isn’t. But shit, I don’t live too far from where you’re talking about. I wouldn’t mind a ‘full-service grocery store’ myself. Of course, I do go to the Daily Co-op a lot. Are you sure you haven’t heard of it?
The store would have a street-facing coffee shop area where you could visit with neighbors. Green Thrift would allow neighborhood customers to roll grocery carts home and have them retrieved by the store.
Um. Dan? Look, I know this is just a dream, a fantasy, a musing-out-loud of impossible things. But did you just say that you’d be able to take your grocery cart home with you? And that someone would have to then walk to your house and bring it back to the store? That someone would have to go to EVERY customer’s house and bring their carts back to the store? Hey, Dan. You love to walk so much? Bring your own fucking cart back to the store you overprivileged dick. In fact, while I’m thinking of it, I bet there’s a hell of a lot more neighborhoods than fucking BOULEVARD that don’t have a grocery store within walking distance of their homes. I’ll give you a hint, Dan. They don’t own their homes.
If you’re familiar with my neighborhood, you might be inclined at this juncture to point out, as a friend of mine did, that I live about a half-mile from Daily Groceries Co-op on Prince Avenue.
Pointed it out several paragraphs below, but yes, I think that’s a good point.
This is true. It’s not a hard walk for me at all, though crossing Prince can be nasty.
Well, Dan. It’s true that Prince doesn’t allow people to post youtube videos of his songs, but I’m sure he has his— Oh wait. You’re talking about Prince Ave. Hey, Dan go down to Milledge. Cross at the light. It’s not that bad.
The store stocks lots of great produce, bread, coffee and other staples. And it’s a sociable place.
So there you go. Problem solved, right? Except for the whole beer and wine thing. But you can go for a drive once a week, right? I mean, it’s not like you don’t own a car. Unlike the people in those other neighborhoods anyway.
I talked to Michael Wegner—a former Daily Groceries manager, musician and fellow neighborhood resident—about the store. He lives about four blocks from the store and says he goes there almost every day. “It’s the perfect distance for me to bring Amelia along,” he says, referring to his five-year-old daughter. “With the store so close, I just come by every day or so and get what I need,” he says. He says sometimes they don’t have exactly what he had in mind to cook that night, but he’ll find something. “And it’s fresh, and I don’t have to plan out meals for a week.”
There you go. Michael Wegner does it. It’s not your dream grocery store, but who says that dreams always have to come true. Besides Dan, it sounds like you’re already living a better life—financially, at least—than most people in our town. By the way Dan, did you know this is the 5th poorest county of its size in the entire United States of Fucking America? Holy shit!
Which is what I want to be able to do, too. But Daily Groceries doesn’t sell meat or wine.
So drive to Kroger once a week, or Earthfare if that’s more your style.
There is bottle shop not too far from me, and Los Compadres, for example—on Prince in Normaltown—is fairly walkable for me and has an impressive meat counter. I’m going to test-run the feasibility of doing my more or less daily shopping on foot in my neighborhood.
Yeah, you do that. Just keep in mind that, as far as ‘dreams not coming true’ is concerned, you’re doing pretty well. By the way that typo in the previous paragraph is Flagpole's fault, not mine.
But I suspect I’ll still be pining for a full-service store like the Green Thrift Grocery of my dreams—or another branch of the reality-based Earth Fare, for example—to locate near me.
Yeah, I kinda suspect you will. But I think asking Earthfare to build stores every mile apart so people can walk to them sounds pretty fucking weird. And unprofitable. Actually, I just had a couple of thoughts, Dan. Here’s one. Walk to fucking Earthfare. A friend of mine lives about as far away as you do. He walks there and back five days a week to go to his job. Or here’s another thought. There’s this thing that runs up and down Milledge every ten minutes called a bus. Why not try riding it? You could even start up conversations with people just like in your imaginary coffee shop. Or do you only like to imagine yourself talking to other Boulevard residents?
Now, as another friend of mine suggested, maybe my wife and I should have bought a home in Five Points—where Earth Fare is located—so that we could be near a smaller format full-service grocery with a coffee shop, which is obviously so important to us.
You sure do have some smart fucking friends, Dan.
But for a variety of reasons, including that we just didn’t feel like we’d be good Five Points material, we chose Boulevard.
‘Good Five Points material?’ What the fuck does that mean? And Dan, just so we’re clear about this, you do realize that ‘choosing Boulevard’ is something that 90%-plus of the residents in this town aren't able to do? Because they can’t afford it?
So let’s get this straight. Dan loves to walk. He loves to walk so much and it just kills him that he can’t walk to the grocery store each day to get his food and beer and wine. However, Dan hates walking back to the grocery store to return his cart (even though he’d only live around the block). Dan hates walking a mile to Earthfare. Dan hates walking to Los Compadres and the Daily Co-op. And Dan hates the idea of living in Five Points because he doesn’t like the identity that comes with living in Five Points.
But apparently the identity of a rich spoiled elitist prick who could give a shit what anyone else might need or want in this community, that identity suits him just fine.
People are fucking weird.
In my next column, I’ll sort through some of the demographic, economic, attitudinal, zoning and legal challenges facing neighborhood groceries in Athens.
Oh my god. I can’t wait.
Normally Kevan Williams writes F-pole’s ‘Athens Rising’ column. He muses on all the ways our city planning could be more effective/responsible etc. There’s some good ideas in it from time to time. This week’s column was written by a gentleman named Dan Lorentz.
So tell us about yourself Dan.
When my wife and I came to Athens about three years ago, we fell in love with Boulevard and its proximity to downtown from the start and bought a house located in the middle of the neighborhood on Lyndon Avenue. But almost as soon as we finished moving in, I started dreaming of a neighborhood grocery store.
What an interesting dream, Dan. I have a reucurring dream that involves riding a school bus as it speeds towards this huge gap in the road that it has to jump across. Sometimes I’m eating a box of donuts in this dream. Sometimes there’s a large man dressed in a bunny suit sitting on my lap. But you dream of neighborhood grocery stores. That’s cool. By the way, have you ever been to the Daily Co-op?
In every other city we’ve lived in, we’ve been able to walk to a decent-sized grocery store—and I had gotten accustomed to that.
Well sure, Dan. But there’s tradeoffs to everything, isn’t there? And I guess buying a house in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in town, within walking distance to downtown, outweighs being able to walk to a decent-sized grocery store. That did factor into your decision, right? Oh, and Dan? You probably already noticed this, but 200 days out of the year, it totally sucks to walk around outside in Athens.
So I began daydreaming of a grocery store. I found a great location for one just a block from my house in a big parking lot at the corner of Chase Street and Dubose Avenue—kitty-corner from Chase Street Elementary School.
Only one block from your house? That’s pretty fucking convenient, Dan. But it is your dream, I guess.
And it had a name: Green Thrift Grocery.
The worst name for a dream grocery store ever—assuming there aren’t any dream grocery stores with the words ‘pus,’ ‘cum bubble,’ or ‘excrement’ in their name.
While it would be a small-format store—just 10,000 square feet (considerably smaller than, say, the 50,000-plus-square-foot Kroger on Alps Road)—it would be full-service. At Green Thrift, you’d be able to get fresh, locally grown foods in season and pretty much everything else a conventional store has to offer (even if there’d be slightly fewer choices), including beer and wine.
You think your store’s going to sell beer and wine? Not kitty-corner from Chase Street elementary it isn’t. But shit, I don’t live too far from where you’re talking about. I wouldn’t mind a ‘full-service grocery store’ myself. Of course, I do go to the Daily Co-op a lot. Are you sure you haven’t heard of it?
The store would have a street-facing coffee shop area where you could visit with neighbors. Green Thrift would allow neighborhood customers to roll grocery carts home and have them retrieved by the store.
Um. Dan? Look, I know this is just a dream, a fantasy, a musing-out-loud of impossible things. But did you just say that you’d be able to take your grocery cart home with you? And that someone would have to then walk to your house and bring it back to the store? That someone would have to go to EVERY customer’s house and bring their carts back to the store? Hey, Dan. You love to walk so much? Bring your own fucking cart back to the store you overprivileged dick. In fact, while I’m thinking of it, I bet there’s a hell of a lot more neighborhoods than fucking BOULEVARD that don’t have a grocery store within walking distance of their homes. I’ll give you a hint, Dan. They don’t own their homes.
If you’re familiar with my neighborhood, you might be inclined at this juncture to point out, as a friend of mine did, that I live about a half-mile from Daily Groceries Co-op on Prince Avenue.
Pointed it out several paragraphs below, but yes, I think that’s a good point.
This is true. It’s not a hard walk for me at all, though crossing Prince can be nasty.
Well, Dan. It’s true that Prince doesn’t allow people to post youtube videos of his songs, but I’m sure he has his— Oh wait. You’re talking about Prince Ave. Hey, Dan go down to Milledge. Cross at the light. It’s not that bad.
The store stocks lots of great produce, bread, coffee and other staples. And it’s a sociable place.
So there you go. Problem solved, right? Except for the whole beer and wine thing. But you can go for a drive once a week, right? I mean, it’s not like you don’t own a car. Unlike the people in those other neighborhoods anyway.
I talked to Michael Wegner—a former Daily Groceries manager, musician and fellow neighborhood resident—about the store. He lives about four blocks from the store and says he goes there almost every day. “It’s the perfect distance for me to bring Amelia along,” he says, referring to his five-year-old daughter. “With the store so close, I just come by every day or so and get what I need,” he says. He says sometimes they don’t have exactly what he had in mind to cook that night, but he’ll find something. “And it’s fresh, and I don’t have to plan out meals for a week.”
There you go. Michael Wegner does it. It’s not your dream grocery store, but who says that dreams always have to come true. Besides Dan, it sounds like you’re already living a better life—financially, at least—than most people in our town. By the way Dan, did you know this is the 5th poorest county of its size in the entire United States of Fucking America? Holy shit!
Which is what I want to be able to do, too. But Daily Groceries doesn’t sell meat or wine.
So drive to Kroger once a week, or Earthfare if that’s more your style.
There is bottle shop not too far from me, and Los Compadres, for example—on Prince in Normaltown—is fairly walkable for me and has an impressive meat counter. I’m going to test-run the feasibility of doing my more or less daily shopping on foot in my neighborhood.
Yeah, you do that. Just keep in mind that, as far as ‘dreams not coming true’ is concerned, you’re doing pretty well. By the way that typo in the previous paragraph is Flagpole's fault, not mine.
But I suspect I’ll still be pining for a full-service store like the Green Thrift Grocery of my dreams—or another branch of the reality-based Earth Fare, for example—to locate near me.
Yeah, I kinda suspect you will. But I think asking Earthfare to build stores every mile apart so people can walk to them sounds pretty fucking weird. And unprofitable. Actually, I just had a couple of thoughts, Dan. Here’s one. Walk to fucking Earthfare. A friend of mine lives about as far away as you do. He walks there and back five days a week to go to his job. Or here’s another thought. There’s this thing that runs up and down Milledge every ten minutes called a bus. Why not try riding it? You could even start up conversations with people just like in your imaginary coffee shop. Or do you only like to imagine yourself talking to other Boulevard residents?
Now, as another friend of mine suggested, maybe my wife and I should have bought a home in Five Points—where Earth Fare is located—so that we could be near a smaller format full-service grocery with a coffee shop, which is obviously so important to us.
You sure do have some smart fucking friends, Dan.
But for a variety of reasons, including that we just didn’t feel like we’d be good Five Points material, we chose Boulevard.
‘Good Five Points material?’ What the fuck does that mean? And Dan, just so we’re clear about this, you do realize that ‘choosing Boulevard’ is something that 90%-plus of the residents in this town aren't able to do? Because they can’t afford it?
So let’s get this straight. Dan loves to walk. He loves to walk so much and it just kills him that he can’t walk to the grocery store each day to get his food and beer and wine. However, Dan hates walking back to the grocery store to return his cart (even though he’d only live around the block). Dan hates walking a mile to Earthfare. Dan hates walking to Los Compadres and the Daily Co-op. And Dan hates the idea of living in Five Points because he doesn’t like the identity that comes with living in Five Points.
But apparently the identity of a rich spoiled elitist prick who could give a shit what anyone else might need or want in this community, that identity suits him just fine.
People are fucking weird.
In my next column, I’ll sort through some of the demographic, economic, attitudinal, zoning and legal challenges facing neighborhood groceries in Athens.
Oh my god. I can’t wait.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Next To Last Festival (So Far)
edit: When I refer to "birthdays & relatives," I'm talking about an actual birthday party and actual visiting relatives, I realize now that "birthdays & relatives" sounds like a Party Party Partners band that, for all I know, might actually be playing the festival.
I'm too tired to put these thoughts into any coherent kind of narrative. If you want real journalism, you can go read the Flagpole, right? So in no apparent order.
The New Sound of Numbers is back, and as good as they've ever been. New bassist Jeff Tobias adds a melodicism to the ping-pong two-chord song structure that has sent their music into an almost dub/reggae direction. I've got one mild criticism, but we'll save it for the end because it's bigger than this band.
There's something that comes across in Supercluster's live show that I still can't find on their album. More raw passion, or something like that. Or maybe they were just in that kind of mood Thursday night. I've certainly never seen Jason NeSmith abuse his guitar like that before. More on them later too.
Tunabunny played the same song for a half-hour. And it wasn't the "outer space" song they put out last year. Apparently, it was an Andy Kaufman cover. The bass player guy told me afterwards that the guy from their label made them do it. Let me get this straight, a label person told them to do this for 30 minutes?
The world is truly a strange place.
Moving on, either Eureka, California wrote a bunch of new songs, or changing drummers had a bigger impact than any of us could have expected. What used to sound like a vaguely 90's alt-rock-pop riff-driven smorgasboard now sounds infinitely leaner and poppier. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Big Eyed Beans From Venus plays Captain Beefheart songs that sound as good as the originals. There can be no higher compliment.
As for the rest of the festival, whoever decided to schedule this thing for the busiest weekend of my year is a dumbass. I was able to make it out to ESG last night (they sounded like ESG, it was good), but missed most of the afternoon shows I wanted to see (birthdays & relatives), and will miss most of tonight's show due to work. I can only hope that future festivals will have the foresight & consideration to call me before choosing their dates.
So to my last point. I think it's great that some people in Athens like to have at least 6 people in their band. But I don't understand why every single person in the band has to constantly be playing their instrument all of the time. Aside from the fact that the music occasionally ends up blending into a giant mush, it fails to take advantage of the full capabilities of a large-piece band. To me, it just sounds lazy. Everyone come up with a part and then we'll just wing it. It'd be so great if say, heading into the second verse, the singer was backed by just the violin and the non-drummer percussionists, and then halfway through the rest of the band came crashing in. It would be so much more dramatic. Or just horns and guitar during the bridge. It could be beautiful. I'm not asking for Burt Bacharach;
I just think a little bit of craft might go a long way. Fuck, even Miles Davis knew enough to stop playing once in a while.
I don't know who started this shit. Dark Meat, probably. But Supercluster and The New Sound of Numbers are guilty of this as well, and they're all smart enough as musicians and people to do better than just settling for a wall of sound.
Parting thought. If you leave a comment on this article saying anything along the lines of, "So you're saying all music has to be arranged and controlled?" or "Who says music has to be dramatic to be effective?" or "How do you define craft?" I am not going to be holding back in my future comments, and I will probably make you cry.
I'm too tired to put these thoughts into any coherent kind of narrative. If you want real journalism, you can go read the Flagpole, right? So in no apparent order.
The New Sound of Numbers is back, and as good as they've ever been. New bassist Jeff Tobias adds a melodicism to the ping-pong two-chord song structure that has sent their music into an almost dub/reggae direction. I've got one mild criticism, but we'll save it for the end because it's bigger than this band.
There's something that comes across in Supercluster's live show that I still can't find on their album. More raw passion, or something like that. Or maybe they were just in that kind of mood Thursday night. I've certainly never seen Jason NeSmith abuse his guitar like that before. More on them later too.
Tunabunny played the same song for a half-hour. And it wasn't the "outer space" song they put out last year. Apparently, it was an Andy Kaufman cover. The bass player guy told me afterwards that the guy from their label made them do it. Let me get this straight, a label person told them to do this for 30 minutes?
The world is truly a strange place.
Moving on, either Eureka, California wrote a bunch of new songs, or changing drummers had a bigger impact than any of us could have expected. What used to sound like a vaguely 90's alt-rock-pop riff-driven smorgasboard now sounds infinitely leaner and poppier. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Big Eyed Beans From Venus plays Captain Beefheart songs that sound as good as the originals. There can be no higher compliment.
As for the rest of the festival, whoever decided to schedule this thing for the busiest weekend of my year is a dumbass. I was able to make it out to ESG last night (they sounded like ESG, it was good), but missed most of the afternoon shows I wanted to see (birthdays & relatives), and will miss most of tonight's show due to work. I can only hope that future festivals will have the foresight & consideration to call me before choosing their dates.
So to my last point. I think it's great that some people in Athens like to have at least 6 people in their band. But I don't understand why every single person in the band has to constantly be playing their instrument all of the time. Aside from the fact that the music occasionally ends up blending into a giant mush, it fails to take advantage of the full capabilities of a large-piece band. To me, it just sounds lazy. Everyone come up with a part and then we'll just wing it. It'd be so great if say, heading into the second verse, the singer was backed by just the violin and the non-drummer percussionists, and then halfway through the rest of the band came crashing in. It would be so much more dramatic. Or just horns and guitar during the bridge. It could be beautiful. I'm not asking for Burt Bacharach;
I just think a little bit of craft might go a long way. Fuck, even Miles Davis knew enough to stop playing once in a while.
I don't know who started this shit. Dark Meat, probably. But Supercluster and The New Sound of Numbers are guilty of this as well, and they're all smart enough as musicians and people to do better than just settling for a wall of sound.
Parting thought. If you leave a comment on this article saying anything along the lines of, "So you're saying all music has to be arranged and controlled?" or "Who says music has to be dramatic to be effective?" or "How do you define craft?" I am not going to be holding back in my future comments, and I will probably make you cry.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
RIPARIUP
Well, here's an article that says more about The Slits than I ever could.
http://popanthropology.blogspot.com/2009/12/reclaiming-slits.html
Everyone talks about the album "Cut" when they talk about The Slits, and yeah, it's great. But if you ever get the chance, check out the sessions they recorded for John Peel, back when Palmolive was still the drummer.
No one's made music like this before or since. Respect is due.
http://popanthropology.blogspot.com/2009/12/reclaiming-slits.html
Everyone talks about the album "Cut" when they talk about The Slits, and yeah, it's great. But if you ever get the chance, check out the sessions they recorded for John Peel, back when Palmolive was still the drummer.
No one's made music like this before or since. Respect is due.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Outside The Loop - Gordon Voidwell
This song is probably going to get a lot more popular.
Let's not kid ourselves; this is little more than disposable pop music. Which is another way of saying that it's colorful, fun, and will make you smile for a couple of weeks until you get sick of it and decide that you never want to hear it again. What's interesting is how much it resembles Reptar. That's not to accuse either one of ripping anyone off. It's just a sound that's very prevalent these days, especially on top-40 radio.
More importantly, it's the similarities between the two artists that magnifies their differences, and helps us to better understand them.
Gordon Voidwell fills his party song with insights into the world of overprivileged elites, rhymes 'ivory towers' with 'big-sized endowments,' and stops you in your tracks as you wonder whether he's celebrating this world, mocking it, or getting ready to destroy it from the inside. It's the difference between observing the world and merely existing in one. And it's a difference that the local group has yet to learn.
And while we're on the subject, Gordon is also a better dancer, as well as a more charismatic frontman.
Let's not kid ourselves; this is little more than disposable pop music. Which is another way of saying that it's colorful, fun, and will make you smile for a couple of weeks until you get sick of it and decide that you never want to hear it again. What's interesting is how much it resembles Reptar. That's not to accuse either one of ripping anyone off. It's just a sound that's very prevalent these days, especially on top-40 radio.
More importantly, it's the similarities between the two artists that magnifies their differences, and helps us to better understand them.
Gordon Voidwell fills his party song with insights into the world of overprivileged elites, rhymes 'ivory towers' with 'big-sized endowments,' and stops you in your tracks as you wonder whether he's celebrating this world, mocking it, or getting ready to destroy it from the inside. It's the difference between observing the world and merely existing in one. And it's a difference that the local group has yet to learn.
And while we're on the subject, Gordon is also a better dancer, as well as a more charismatic frontman.
Outside The Loop - Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono
The world's biggest pop star sings a Yoko Ono song with Yoko. And that can only be a good thing. I could write 2500 words on Gaga, but for the sake of space let's just say: music = pretty good for top-40, performance = bloodthristy & captivating).
I know to most of the world she's nothing more than a punchline--actually, I suppose that applies to both of them--but for my money, Yoko Ono is one of the most creative, interesting, and (here's a word that seems to pop up a lot these days) experimental artists in the history of music. In fact, after attending the recent AUX show at Little Kings, I walked away disappointed in a couple of things. First, the lack of female representation in general (3 non-singers out of the 42 performers), and secondly that somewhere along the line it was decided that, as it pertains to female vocalists, a slow dull moan that sounds a-little-sexual-but-maybe-also-a-little-constipated constitutes 'experimental.' Nobody, it seemed, was familiar with Yoko Ono--or even James Brown, for that matter. (As always, the lovely and amazing Vanessa Hay is exempt from this criticism).
Here's a song by a woman in her 70's. It came out early last year.
And here's a song she made shortly after she saw her husband shot and murdered. (1981, in case you're not good with the math).
There's plently of stuff, both wilder and more beautiful, where this came from. Go find it if you're interested.
More Yoko thoughts:
1) My favorite Beatle-related album of all time is John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. Her influence is all over it.
2) At the time he met her, John Lennon was an abusive asshole, to his wife, his son, his bandmates, pretty much everyone he came in contact with. It is a testament to Yoko Ono's strength, patience, and love, that he was significantly less of an asshole at the time of his death.
3) If Jordan Stepp is reading this, she would probably be interested to know that Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson were hugely influenced by Yoko Ono. You can trace a direct line from Yoko's early stuff to the vocals in Rock Lobster, to say nothing of Give Me Back My Man.
More AUX thoughts:
1) Jeff Tobias offering to let anyone in the audience play his saxophone, provided 'they had never played saxophone before' absolutely embodied everything I think that experimental (the temptation to put it in quotes every time I write it is strong, but I resist) music should be.
2) Each of the drummers were fantastic.
3) It might be fun next time to mandate than 1/3 of the performers shouldn't know how to play their instrument.
4) It might be fun to see more than a couple of people actually look like they're having fun. The atmosphere fell somewhere between a library and a professor's den.
5) There would appear to be a direct correlation between the volume of a performer's amplifier and the number of masturbatory gestures they make on their instrument.
6) I don't know how much of it was rehearsed, but if all felt very safe. If we're not going to see performers taking risks, then what's the point of going to see experimental music in the first place?
7) I left about 2/3 of the way through. So my opinions are based on that. I intended to go back, but just didn't feel like it. Such is the freedom that comes with having no boss and no career ambitions.
Which brings us back to one of this article's subjects--Lady Gaga--and a question. When the most successful pop star in the world is more 'experimental' (I couldn't resist) than the avant-garde, does that reflect poorly on the avant-garde? Or does it mean that we might have, in Lady Gaga, a performer worth watching because we don't know what she'll do next?
That last question was rhetorical by the way.
I know to most of the world she's nothing more than a punchline--actually, I suppose that applies to both of them--but for my money, Yoko Ono is one of the most creative, interesting, and (here's a word that seems to pop up a lot these days) experimental artists in the history of music. In fact, after attending the recent AUX show at Little Kings, I walked away disappointed in a couple of things. First, the lack of female representation in general (3 non-singers out of the 42 performers), and secondly that somewhere along the line it was decided that, as it pertains to female vocalists, a slow dull moan that sounds a-little-sexual-but-maybe-also-a-little-constipated constitutes 'experimental.' Nobody, it seemed, was familiar with Yoko Ono--or even James Brown, for that matter. (As always, the lovely and amazing Vanessa Hay is exempt from this criticism).
Here's a song by a woman in her 70's. It came out early last year.
And here's a song she made shortly after she saw her husband shot and murdered. (1981, in case you're not good with the math).
There's plently of stuff, both wilder and more beautiful, where this came from. Go find it if you're interested.
More Yoko thoughts:
1) My favorite Beatle-related album of all time is John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. Her influence is all over it.
2) At the time he met her, John Lennon was an abusive asshole, to his wife, his son, his bandmates, pretty much everyone he came in contact with. It is a testament to Yoko Ono's strength, patience, and love, that he was significantly less of an asshole at the time of his death.
3) If Jordan Stepp is reading this, she would probably be interested to know that Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson were hugely influenced by Yoko Ono. You can trace a direct line from Yoko's early stuff to the vocals in Rock Lobster, to say nothing of Give Me Back My Man.
More AUX thoughts:
1) Jeff Tobias offering to let anyone in the audience play his saxophone, provided 'they had never played saxophone before' absolutely embodied everything I think that experimental (the temptation to put it in quotes every time I write it is strong, but I resist) music should be.
2) Each of the drummers were fantastic.
3) It might be fun next time to mandate than 1/3 of the performers shouldn't know how to play their instrument.
4) It might be fun to see more than a couple of people actually look like they're having fun. The atmosphere fell somewhere between a library and a professor's den.
5) There would appear to be a direct correlation between the volume of a performer's amplifier and the number of masturbatory gestures they make on their instrument.
6) I don't know how much of it was rehearsed, but if all felt very safe. If we're not going to see performers taking risks, then what's the point of going to see experimental music in the first place?
7) I left about 2/3 of the way through. So my opinions are based on that. I intended to go back, but just didn't feel like it. Such is the freedom that comes with having no boss and no career ambitions.
Which brings us back to one of this article's subjects--Lady Gaga--and a question. When the most successful pop star in the world is more 'experimental' (I couldn't resist) than the avant-garde, does that reflect poorly on the avant-garde? Or does it mean that we might have, in Lady Gaga, a performer worth watching because we don't know what she'll do next?
That last question was rhetorical by the way.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Dead Confederate Wants To Sell You A Taco!
You won't find the boys of Dead Confederate bragging about it on their website, but Taco Bell is "really excited to have Dead Confederate back in the Feed The Beat program". DC's new album "is in heavy rotation at the Taco Bell offices!" (their exclamation point, not mine). What's this all about, you ask?
From Taco Bell's Feed The Beat website:
For five consecutive years, Taco Bell® and its Feed the Beat® program have provided a total of 365 music artists/bands with $500 in Taco Bell Bucks. Touring music artists can relate to eating on the road and Taco Bell wants to help by picking up their post-show late-night dinner tabs so they can focus on their true passion: music.
Next time anyone in town (particularly their manager) tells you how big Dead Confederate is getting, ask yourself this question: How well can a band be doing when it prostitutes itself for $500 worth of tacos?
Though, like the band itself, most Taco Bell food is made out of grungy leftovers from the early 90's. (Aside from the Crunch Wrap Supreme, which is awesomely delicious).
Also, if the press release for your new album, Sugar, is going to mention Bob Mould--and DC's does, along with (in order) Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady, Smashing Pumpkins, The Walkmen, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, The Whigs, Dandy Warhols, and Brian Jonestown Massacre--you should probably be aware that Bob Mould was in a band called Sugar. It was great; David Barbe played bass in it.
Anyway, here's a link to a free download of DC's ironically titled "Giving It All Away,' courtesy of Taco Bell and Feed The Beat.
www.feedthebeat.com/freebies/dead-confederate-free-mp3-download/
From Taco Bell's Feed The Beat website:
For five consecutive years, Taco Bell® and its Feed the Beat® program have provided a total of 365 music artists/bands with $500 in Taco Bell Bucks. Touring music artists can relate to eating on the road and Taco Bell wants to help by picking up their post-show late-night dinner tabs so they can focus on their true passion: music.
Next time anyone in town (particularly their manager) tells you how big Dead Confederate is getting, ask yourself this question: How well can a band be doing when it prostitutes itself for $500 worth of tacos?
Though, like the band itself, most Taco Bell food is made out of grungy leftovers from the early 90's. (Aside from the Crunch Wrap Supreme, which is awesomely delicious).
Also, if the press release for your new album, Sugar, is going to mention Bob Mould--and DC's does, along with (in order) Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady, Smashing Pumpkins, The Walkmen, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, The Whigs, Dandy Warhols, and Brian Jonestown Massacre--you should probably be aware that Bob Mould was in a band called Sugar. It was great; David Barbe played bass in it.
Anyway, here's a link to a free download of DC's ironically titled "Giving It All Away,' courtesy of Taco Bell and Feed The Beat.
www.feedthebeat.com/freebies/dead-confederate-free-mp3-download/
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