Wednesday, June 30, 2004

‘A moment of serenity’

I helped Mike Doughty and his band load their equipment into a minivan before they departed for the 900-mile drive to Dallas. It was the least I could do. Sure it was cool (though painfully close to groupie status) and tell Doughty it was a great show, but honestly, after the $10 admission and $12 cd I felt guilty, like I was stealing something.
Long a favorite band of mine, Soul Coughing has filled a strange niche for me. Both abstractly literate and abstractly funky, the band caught my ear from the first. Jumpy baselines, snappy hip-hop drumming, a slew of weird sounds - birds swooping to doors creaking - from the keyboard sampler and loopy, half-rap vocals made for purely unique listening.
And the lyrics... Most easily described as dream-scape beat poetry, Mike Doughty’s near-always compelling lines deliver absurd imagery in haphazard rhyme schemes.
In November 1996, six of us loaded into the General’s Crown Vic for a trip to Tempe: destination Soul Coughing at Gibson’s. One of my first concert (and road trip) experiences, the whole day was enjoyable and all of it memorable. The freedom was barely big enough to hold our teen-age energy. Ridiculous for the most part, the trip hinged around the show. One-hit (?) wonder Geggy Tah opened.
Soul Coughing just plain floored us. I’d love to have a tape of us talking about the show, a bunch of kids throwing every superlative description they know at a band that really deserves it. We ran into Doughty walking back to the car after getting coffee after the show. I think we startled him; he spilled about half of his coffee, mostly on his hand. The moment galvanized for us the fact that Doughty could be the perfect anti-hero, the anti-role model.
The band broke up far too soon, as far as I was concerned at the time. Sure their last album veered way too far into drum+bass territory, but what would we possibly do without more Soul Coughing?
There was no answer, and in coming years my tastes grew more into country-rock styles. While Soul Coughing remained in high regard, I stopped thinking more output was necessary. Then last fall I heard Doughty’s first solo album, a simple one-man on acoustic guitar collection that instantly reaffirmed my fandom.
Several months of heavy listening to Skittish later, Doughty hit Solar Culture on Sunday night.
The crew and I unfortunately missed the first two songs, but walked in during “The Only Answer,” Skittish’s opening track. Drums and piano backed Doughty, playing a Strat, clear and straightforward.
Song to song to song to song... a great show, a purely happy moment.
One tune by the name of “Madeleine and Nine” again made me think of a Long Lost Friend, one who shared with me, inspired by Doughty, in fits of writing bad beat poetry, some of which I still have saved on my computer in a folder named “Rolling Over Jack Kerouac.”
Doughty hit on Super Bon Bon, in a vastly different arrangement, signature bass line removed in favor of a funk guitar strum.
After saying the band learned it during soundcheck, Doughtly launched into a mostly spot on version of Kenny Rogers' the Gambler, singing a series of blah blah's for one verse after he forgot the words.
Ever the banterer, Doughty paused at one point to tell a story about the Bonaroo festival in Tennessee. He joined a float, a giant Mr. T head, journeying around the camping area tossing beads out. Then William Hung emerged on the same float, singing, while far in the distance, Bucket Head stood on the stage, staring at what he most certainly must have considered a hallucination.
A slate of new songs, including an overtly political one set for a Move On benefit album produced by John Flansburg of They Might Be Giants, were all amazing.
But proof that an old fan likes the old tunes, the encore of “True Dreams of Wichita” and “Janine” absolutely floored me. Again.

Joe and Smokes

Few things in this world are more random than a conversation between a coffee-pot swilling Bill Murray and tea sipping Wu Tangers, mainly centered on alternative medicine.
But Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright inexplicably changing chairs (and a dental appointment) comes very close.
And two old men confused about whether they’re on lunch or a coffee break isn’t particularly out of the ordinary, but add in the phrase “It sounds so heavy and ponderous” and things turn to the strange.
“Coffee and Cigarettes” isn’t particularly good on the whole, but there are dozens of near-perfect moments throughout.
From the perspective of one who has killed many a grand hour in the company of coffee and cigarettes (and of course, company) the film reaches its truth in the atmosphere.
There’s a definite cadence to the coffee drinking session, a very natural rise and fall of things, a pacing that isn’t the same as say a bar or park bench. It is leisure that has taken on a crucial tone, but still isn’t ready to rush things.
Maybe it’s just because the experiences are linked, but I’d compare drinking coffee (and the abandoned accompaniment of cigarette smoking) to reading Salinger.
The rebel spirit of over-analysis is present in both; it’s an intellectual pursuit that serves little actual purpose. And the characters are rich - in company and in beverage.
Jim Jarmusch did nothing particularly groundbreaking in stringing together 11 short black and white films, but “Coffee and Cigarettes” doesn’t seem to be about making an artistic statement. It seems to be, simply, a celebration of the convergence of its title elements. There’s an inherent freedom in being able to pass the time over a cup of coffee, and a certain challenge posed in filling time with conversation.
Go see it, support your local art house theatre. Then get a cup of coffee (Nikola Tesla conversation optional).

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Long lost friend sighting...

This magazine ad has survived two moves in the last three years, because it looks just like Ted. I pick it up, hold it over the trash, and laugh every time. Now it's up on our cork bulletin board.


Dr. Chung spotting
mrchair (505tsl)

Speaking of our long lost friend...

Look! It's Doctor Chung! It's gotta be!




Friday, June 25, 2004

Our Long Lost Friend

I found this online:

Writing Exercise #1
by Ted M. Simpao
Chicago, USA

So I sit down and start writing a story again. I'm trying desperately not to bump into anything. I've read far too many insipid stories about boys and girls and dying uncles in wheelchairs, etc, etc.

I promise myself I'm going to write a story about something. I'm going to use clever words and phrases, find my voice and make a dent in the sizeable volume of the sheer cesspool that is my writing journal.

Take a moment and we'll tour it. OK, imagine me, a gruff 20 something with six days of beard (duh) and cheaply cool clothing, I'm probably wearing an ironic t-shirt and jeans. I open up the ol' file on my crap-stounding computer and double click.

Hey look, here's a treatment for a movie I never wrote. Here's a poem about Kurosawa. Oh, a one-act play regarding the adventures of Captain Fancy Pants and his Magical Trombone. (That one is a zinger, you'll have to check it out sometime.)

What else is in here? Shucks, a character sketch. A sad love story that mimics my real life. A story on multiple themes with classical elements. A post-modern piece on drug abusing teenagers.

I wrote all of 'em with the spirit of conflict, theme, rise and resolution and etc, etc, etc. Diction, language, character foils, allegories, etc, etc. This one references Kafka, this one references the Bible and The Tale of Genji simultaneuously. Here's one that steals an entire chapter from "As I Lay Dying." (Captain Fancy Pants and his Magical Trombone is actually a re-write of a Macedonian legend I heard about in a poetry lecture.)

Good lord, I've even tried meta-fiction. Clicking again on a folder labeled "Meta Dude!" I instantly see some of the meta-fiction I've tried. I wrote a tone poem that requires you to look up a website. Seriously. You can't imagine how I fit the word "http://" into a stressed and unstressed syllable scheme. It was tough, believe me.

Speaking of poetry, don't even ask me how to rhyme, I forgot long ago. It was sixth grade and I was in the cafeteria, singing aloud my favorite poem of the day. It went something like this:

"I'm Popeye the sailor man
I live in a garbage can
I'm strong to the finish
'Cause I eats my spinach
I'm Popeye the sailor man."

Pure unabashed genius! You can't imagine how clever I thought this was. Modern poetry could never replace the feelings of power over the English language I commanded at this age. Take this, Longfellow! Eat it, Amiri Baraka! I'm Popeye the sailor man!

Ok, I'm done ranting. It's time to get to the writing. Let's see.hero, heroine, and devilishly clever or powerful monster. Let's explore that.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Wilco's new "radiant beauty"

The soft piano that opens “At Least That’s What You Said” occupies one end of the Wilco spectrum, while the spastic, wailing fuzz guitar that closes the track is the sentinal that guards the far gate.
The fitting combination makes the lead track from A Ghost Is Born as much a statement song as Wilco has ever recorded. It’s demanding: Listen close and we’ll blow your mind.
The curious - and fascinating and difficult and rewarding - part is that those divergent sounds aren’t split into anything resembling an obvious dichotomoy. They’re not good/evil, not light/dark, not peace/chaos.
They’re the desert and the rain, the late night caffeine buzz. They’re Wilco. While no album is more than passingly similar to any other, each song in the Wilco canon is unmistakably Wilco.
A Ghost is Born succeeds as much as the rest, and while two ill-advised detours break up the continuity, it is a fine album that will surely rank among the year’s best. That Wilco has gone from ignored to praised to overly dissected by critics means nothing more than the band has continued to make good music long enough to get noticed on a larger scale. While stories of record-label battles, band infighting and drug addiction are alternately fascinating and annoying, they are just stories. Wilco is music.
For the obligatory comparison of A Ghost is Born to Wilco’s previous works, especially the 2002 masterpiece and flag-planting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I’ll simply present the first words from each, chronologically backwards-wise.
“When I sat down on the bed next to you / You started to cry”
“I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue”
“The way things go / You get so low / Struggle to find your skin”
“When you're back in your old neighborhood / The cigarettes taste so good”
“You always wanted more time / To do what you / Always wanted to do”
Lots of I’s and lots of you’s. Comforting and familiar at times, but there’s an underlying mobility in each. Wanting and struggling and old home and crying and absurdity. There’s nothing easy in there.
“At Least That’s What You Said” certainly fits. It’s a somber, simple, plaintive love poem before the music pulls a backwards “Layla,” diving into guitar noise from the shore of a piano ballad. It sure as hell makes you stop.
“Hell is Chrome” can barely stand up afterwards, but it’s a nice breather. This isn’t album filler, this is a brilliant way to structure a truly great listening experience from collaborative tracks...
Which makes the existence of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” so goddamned unfortunate. It’s obnoxious at best. My first downloaded copy did not come with the crazy Euro-stomp that goes for waaaay tooooo looooong, so the song sure was a shocker. It’s not my place to question Jeff Tweedy’s intentions and frankly I don’t give a damn if the song (and companion nonsense “Less Than You Think”) is a sonic presentation of his migraines, as has been suggested. I’ve had migraines and they’re hell. There’s no reason to turn it to song. My best hope for the track is simply that it grows on me, just enough to not cringe at it.
Ahh. “Spiders” is over, or more likely has been skipped.
After a bit of a warm-up or return to form with “A Muzzle of Bees,” A Ghost is Born commences with a five-song stretch of pure ass-kicking brilliance.
“Hummingbird” presents the strange man whose “Goal in life was to be an echo.” Here Tweedy is at his thought-provoking best. Is it his goal in life to be an echo? Is it merely a repetition of what came before? Or does he think more of an echo - that haunting, ill-formed sound that curls up in alleyways and canyon walls, yet seeming to spring forth from nowhere - and give it some netherworld quality? The rest of the song follows with some of his most enjoyable imagery since turning assassin into a verb, all wrapped up in tricky half-rhymes that work beautifully. “A fixed bayonet through the great Southwest to forget her” and “But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans / No one could hear him” are among the best.
During Wilco’s performance of the song last week on David Letterman, Tweedy performed the song guitar-less, effecting a pseudo-lounge bounce, clearly enjoying himself. That certainly bodes well once the band rescheduled their trip out to the Great Southwest, and I can finally see a live show again.
“Handshake Drugs” is a comfortably down-and-out take on any town in America. His is a Downtown filled with characters - those weirdos we barely if ever knew but remember with a chuckle forever.
The music here is bouncy, as in the last one, but takes another wistful turn on “Wishful Thinking,” at the same time celebrating the quest for wisdom and acknowledging a certain futility:
“Fill up your mind with all it can know
Don't forget that your body will let it all go
Fill up your mind with all it can know
What would we be without wishful thinking”
The song’s tone - musically and lyrically - is infused with the sense of an overly reflective quest, the type generically and demeaningly termed “mid-life crisis.” It’s an unquiet mind that questions life’s every turn, but in Tweedy’s hands, a constant search and review of oneself seems worth the while.
The album turns it up a notch with “Company in My Back,” the most straight ahead rocker of the set. The bouncy song may well serve as the band’s unofficial definition: while not their best, it seems to be the only song that would fit right in on any album the band has recorded.

I’ve read probably a dozen reviews of the album by now - The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchforkmedia, The Onion, among others - none of which focus much on the album, or the band for that matter.
Music critics are sometimes unfortunate souls - they have to break the new bands, spot the trends, coin the name of the latest sub-genre. They’re searching to land their own fame, a la John Landau’s “I saw the rock and roll future and its name is Springsteen,” and Robert Shelton’s “A bright new face in folk music is appearing at Gerde's Folk City.” They focus too much on the personality, too much on Tweedy’s narrative arc - alt-country pioneer turned sonic experimentalist. It’s all too convincingly cinematic and they just jump at it.
It’s a shame because they all bypass the simple truth - that Wilco is among the best bands recording today and that Jeff Tweedy is an uncomprimising front man, a musical poet in the best of the American tradition.
It’s great music worth celebrating and treasuring, so sit on your porch and turn it up, grab a beer and enjoy.

We're living in a sci-fi world

And I'm a sci-fi girl.

This is the second time this week that I've heard something in the news and considered, "Huh, I might be dreaming right now, and when I wake up I'll tell people, 'Oh shit, I just remembered this crazy dream I had where...'" You know those dreams where it's tough to tell the difference between what's reality and sleepytime, except for one thing, like instead of reading books you snort lines of info, or super-smart monkeys have replaced teachers.

The first time was when a private foundation sent a manned ship into space and landed. That's actually a Warren Ellis plotline. Granted, the ship is sent into space on a giant ramp that runs along a mountain ridge. But still, it happened in last month's Global Frequency. I still can't believe this actually took place. I think there's been this track of thought that holds space travel in a government context. Like it's greater than a person and must only be approached by something like a nation. Thinking of a privately engineered science project shooting a guy into space draws that same expression as the monkey for teacher dream.

Then I read today that German scientists found a toddler who is stronger than many adults. The reason: he's a mutant. His DNA has mutated to prevent a protein that limits muscle growth. What the fuck! There is a little German boy with superpowers .... and I read it in the news.

I keep checking my mailbox for a notice that it's almost time to go to Carousel. Still it's not really scary, is it? It's pretty cool. Stuff changes. New, big things happen. Ellis said in a recent newsletter that he was just starting up a story about superhuman mutation, and, "Keeping up with the news is the worst thing about my job."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Manga to read, They Might be Giants to listen to, and Magic the Gathering to play.

testy

So is this a sci-fi blog? Has anybody seen The Chronicles of Riddick yet? I heard it makes Pitch Black look like the first season of Dr. Who.

Monday, June 21, 2004

testing my signature

I'm testing my signature again.
I don't really like this template.

a ghost is born

Today as a matter of fact.

I've only heard a few songs from the new Wilco album, but I'm hoping for a great textured album that will seep in and not go away, just like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

This post isn't so much about the album, since I don't own it, but about the treatment it's received from rock writers so far. Every review I've seen has been glowing, but qualified with resentment for the band's well-deserved reputation. In classic too cool for school fashion, writers aren't writing about the album, but the myth of the album.

People hate it when talented artists deserving respect ... well, get respect. Modest Mouse is on a bullet train to not cool ever since they gained mainstream success with an uncompromising, astonishing release. The Sunday New York Times had a big article about the "myth of Wilco," that essentially stated: "sure they're good, but I'm not nearly as impressed by them as everyone else. And oh yeah, they're fans are all so white." Entertainment Weekly gave it a solid B, but bitched throughout about Tweedy's past pretention. "the music was continually undercut by a smug, smart-ass cockiness; Tweedy seemed all too aware he was a clever songwriter." and "they sure reveled in their roles as industry martyrs. Annoying, also, is ghost's pretentious lowercase album title and especially, the way Tweedy ... actively resists vocal projection..." and so on.

I once read a Bright Eyes review on trendy Pitchfork Media that gave an album a great rating, but deemed it disappointing that Oberst hasn't done anything more adventurous. Fuck you, where's your album rock geek? It's kind of like how you can read the NYT Book Review, and have no fucking clue whether the reviewers like the books or not.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I hope a requirement for the TSL isn't a concrete thesis. But it's not like anyone else is posting anyway, and besides, I got the first F-bomb.

Saturday, June 19, 2004

mrchair tests the waters...


Corner of Burnside and First Avenue, typically surrounded by bums.
mrchair (505tsl)

This morning I watched Kirk Cameron's "The Way of the Master" on Trinity Broadcast Network. Strongly recommended. It gives Growing Pains a whole new dimension.

Rev. Mike Seaver