I’m selecting a Tom Waits song. I awoke this morning thinking of steam rising from the bayou, air getting thicker as the sun get higher in the morning. I live in Seattle – I’ve never experienced the steamy bayou, but that’s how visions come and go. I read this morning’s theme, and went straight to Tom.
Song: Gun Street Girl
Album: Rain Dogs
Artist: Tom Waits
Song Writer: Thomas Alan Waits
Thanks to Helen for the challenge. (And thanks to William from 1000 Mistakes for pointing me to this.) Song Lryic Sunday
“Gun Street Girl”
Falling James in the Tahoe mud
Stick around to tell us all the tale
He fell in love with a Gun Street girl and
Now he’s dancing in the Birmingham jail
Dancing in the Birmingham jail
Took a 100 dollars off a Slaughterhouse Joe
Bought a bran’ new Michigan 20 gauge
Got all liquored up on that roadhouse corn
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette
Bought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese
Dyed his hair in the bathroom of a Texaco
With a pawnshop radio, quarter past 4
Well he left Waukegan at the slammin’ of the door
He left Waukegan at the slammin’ of the door
I said, John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
I said John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
Sitting in a sycamore in St. John’s Wood
Soakin’ day old bread in kerosene
He was blue as a robin’s egg, brown as a hog
Stayin’ out of circulation till the dogs get tired
Stayin’ out of circulation till the dogs get tired
Shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone
He never got up in the morning on a Saturday
Sittin’ by the Erie with a bull whipped dog
Tellin’ everyone he saw
They went thatta way
Tellin’ everyone he saw
They went thatta way
Now the rain’s like gravel on an old tin roof
And the Burlington Northern’s pullin’ out of the world
Now a head full of bourbon and a dream in the straw
And a Gun Street Girl was the cause of it all
A Gun Street girl was the cause of it all
Riding in the shadow by the St. Joe Ridge
He heard the click clack tappin’ of a blind man’s cane
He was Pullin’ into Baker on a New Year’s Eve
With one eye on the pistol and the other on the door
With one eye on the pistol and the other on the door
Miss Charlotte took her satchel down to King Fish Row
And she smuggled in a bran’ new pair of alligator shoes
With her fireman’s raincoat and her long yellow hair, well
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire
I said, John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
I said John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
Bangin’ on a table with an old tin cup
Sing I’ll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again
I’ll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again
I said, John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
I said John, John he’s long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain’t never coming home
Can you name any Yoko Ono work that did not involve John Lennon? Ever see a painting? Can you describe a sculpture? Performance? No? That was me. I changed that.
My Story
My story begins when I realized I could not identify any Yoko Ono art. I knew some songs she’d done with John. Nobody ever talks about her work. I had never seen a catalogue of one of her shows for sale at the museum bookstore. (Good grief, for the scores of museum shops I’ve browsed, big or small, mainstream or underground, never a Yoko catalogue?) Why is it so hard to see / hear / touch a Yoko piece?
(Walk with me through this tangent, I’ll come back around.)
I was planning to visit Easter Island. I studied, probed, and re-planned: how do I get there, where do I stay, how do I get around?
My travel plan went like this: depart Seattle Saturday morning, arrive Santiago early Sunday; depart for Easter on Wednesday and return a week later, Thursday; depart Santiago late on Saturday night to fly home, arriving in Seattle at lunchtime.
I would spend some time in Santiago, so I started reading about that. It’s a nice Spanish colonial place, second-world country, sturdy economy with a strong middle class. Art museums? I learned about Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. Salvador Allende was the president when Chile suffered the coup d’état in the early 1970s. Artists from around the world sent works in support of Allende, and the museum was born.
This museum, proudly, is a time capsule. They have collected no works from any era previous to, or since, the events of 1973. Their entire collection consists solely of gifts. Their sole mission is to keep the doors open – a reminder of those events. They have a Calder, a Picasso, a Miro, I read … they have an Ono. “I’ve never seen an Ono before,” I gasped aloud, to myself, “I have to go there.”
My guide book and my map showed two different locations for el museo. The courtyard suggested by the map, just by the hostel I was staying at, did not have a museum. It did have an angry, barking dog; I left quickly. Beautiful courtyard, though. I walked for ages to the address in my guide book. Found it!
El Museo de la Solidaridad Salvader Allende se traslado Av. Rebublica 475
Figure 1: The museum has moved.
El museo had moved to a new address. I took a cab to the new address. Found it! The museum exists. Closed.
I flew home late that night.
Five years later, I returned to Chile to walk through some of Patagonia. Similar routine, I was in Santiago for a day or two before flying down to Punta Arenas. I went back to the museum – I had the correct address now. Closed.
When I returned to Santiago the following week, I returned again. Fifth times a charm.
The guy selling tickets spoke English. I told Brian my tale; he was delighted by my persistence, and gifted me a museum catalog. I told him I wanted to see the Ono. It was in storage, he explained. They don’t have enough space to display their entire collection, so they close up one week every month and rotate artworks. (That explains the previous closures that I suffered.) If I’d made it to the museum the week prior to the previous week, I would have seen the Ono. (The catalogue is abridged – no picture of the Ono.)
Her Work
I’ve been obsessed with Yoko ever since, for years now, walking around with the question, ‘why is it so hard to see an Ono?’ Since my Chilean misadventures, I’ve had a chance to read some of her work, listen to some of her music, peruse catalogues of her work. I’ve read books by her and books written about her with similar sentiment as mine. She’s interesting. She’s fascinating. I want my readers to re-consider her in new light, or consider her as newly found.
Typically, she’s very conceptual. She does not produce work that you’d buy to hang on your wall, nor to place in the public square, but she has produced interesting ideas. Egad – you have to ponder to appreciate her work. And more frequently, the piece is not complete until an observer absorbs it, ponders it, and somehow interacts with it. The observer must complete the piece.
Figure 2: White Chess Set (1966)
The idea for ”White Chess Set” is that two people can start playing chess, a game of war. Eventually they cannot tell who is who, and it becomes a cooperative effort, no longer at conflict, two players must help each other “is that mine?” “I think this knight is yours” “I think you just put yourself in check…” I think somebody could write a comedy skit.
From the mid-1950s to 1961, John Cage taught musical composition at the New School for Social Research. Yoko took a class on the Fluxus movement, as Cage interpreted, write instructions for musicians to complete a piece. Yoko extended those ideas to all art forms; she believed her work was incomplete, until somebody else — you, or I, or you and I — did something with it. She left instructions for someone else to complete an art work. I’ll share a couple, and invite my reader to offer more.
One December day, I shared this on FB:
Figure 3: “Tape Piece III” from Yoko’s book Grapefruit.
It is white in Seattle today, reminding me of this Yoko Ono piece.
I imagine walking out into the woods, dark now, and snowing. The sound of total silence surrounds the cold air. There is no wind playing with the tree branches, the evening birds are done singing and squawking, now seek shelter from the storm. The squirrels and chipmunks, also sheltered, have finished their business, of squirrelling and chipmunking. I can hear the frosty air escape as I breath in and out.
That is the sound of falling snow. I do not wrap gifts. Superfluous.
Cued from Acorn, I completed a short piece for “City Piece X”
Figure 4: “City Piece X” from Yoko’s book, Acorns
It is a quiet day. People walk the streets like zombies before their morning brains. You can hear the smallest of sounds, birds chirp and tweet.
It is a glorious day.
The sun is out. The noise stayed in the garage. My skin is notably pale. People blink their eyes, the sun was just invented and nobody’s read about it yet. A bicycle commuter rides by, then two more, you can hear them talking and hear the spokes spinning far down the road.
People could use her cues to write poems for ages.
Her Music
This is supposed to be a music blog; let’s listen to some of Yoko’s music. I’ve selected a sampling to enjoyed without further comment.
Because the video is cool, and short, I’m offering this abridged version of “Mind Train”. But if you liked this piece, do yourself a favor and settle into the 16+ minute version.
Yoko is an amalgam of stuff, and a lot of her sounds are before a genre existed. Listening to Fly (released 1971) and Approximately Infinite Universe (released 1973), I hear pre-disco, protopunk, club beats, tape loops, drone, folk music, avant-garde, kids’ sing-alongs, fucking-warped opera arias, and straight-up-dirty-ass rock and roll. She has a distinctive voice; she grew up in Tokyo, descended from Samurai, and English is her second language – your voice would be distinctive, too. Give it a chance. It’s pretty cool, Baby. (I’m still waiting for “fucking-warped opera aria” to be invented by somebody and to become a genre recognized by many.)
I started down this path in a vacuum, but I discovered that I was not alone. MOMA had a retrospective in 2015. Reaching Out With No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono, the excellent book by Lisa Carver (2012), is loving and well researched in breadth and detail of Yoko’s life and work. (I almost quit working on this piece after reading that.) And I’ve discovered many established musicians reaching back and grabbing one of her songs to cover. Here’s Elvis Costello with Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice”.
I cannot think of any woman in the entertainment world who has suffered the brazen misogyny that Yoko has been offered. She is best known for breaking up the Beatles. But that’s crap. John and George broke up the Beatles. George Harrison wanted to perform songs that he was writing. John Lennon thought it was time to move on. That’s no reason to hate anyone.
John tells a story about participating in one of Yoko’s works, when they first met; from The Beatles Bible
… But there was another piece that really decided me for-or-against the artist: a ladder which led to a painting which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. This was near the door when you went in. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says ‘yes’. So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘fuck you’ or something, it said ‘yes’. – John Lennon (on meeting Yoko)
John was in love, and that’s all I need to know.
The Not-Final Word
I only know so much, and I can only write a little. If people are interested in more, a good place to continue is this short video,“The Case for Yoko Ono”. The anonymous narrator has a pleasant, informing voice. Less than 7 minutes long, it’ll take less time than it took you to read my article and is packed with much more information. She talks faster than I write.
I’ve been writing this piece in my head for some years, hand-wrote some stuff on a recent flight, and started typing up a piece last week. Than I noticed two blogs that I follow also put out Dylan pieces last week, and I stalled. Should I wait? Should I join the crowd? I decided to try to finish.
Before I get too far along, almost nobody is more copyright conscious than Dylan, maybe Prince, so putting together a playlist on YT is near impossible. You’ll be getting some live versions instead of the studio cuts that I typically listen to. You miss something if you don’t go find the originals. (To be fair, there is an official TY page https://www.youtube.com/user/BobDylanVEVO .)
I think a lot about death. Not in a morbid way, not suicidal or homicidal, but curiously. Philosophically. It’s had key impacts on my life; it part of everybody’s life every now and again
We’ve lost a lot of heroes over the past 2-3 years, and somehow that got me to thinking about Dylan one day. When Bob dies, the headlines will be all about ‘Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone”. The glossy mags will rehash the already-told stories of 1960s New York, The Village, that night he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, and maybe that motorcycle crash that nobody really knows anything about.
I don’t mean to eulogize, I’d rather celebrate life than death, but death was on my mind recently when I started to scribble. It’s my time to celebrate him. Besides, maybe he really did make a deal with the devil; if he’s going to outlive me, I’d better get a move on.
People will write about that nasally voice, but that’s not my thing. (Why don’t people talk about that fucking harmonica? I hate that thing.) Two things I want to say about Dylan, I guess.
He is unafraid to move in new directions. Not with the stay-fresh anxiety of Bowie, but with a curiosity to spend time with new ideas, to add innovations to old traditions, and to find an assortment of new bandmates. I guess that’s a theme for me, and how I try to explore music: be not afraid, find anew. (I try to generalize that to my whole life, but hard to judge how I’m doing.)
In his biography, Chronicles volume one, he talked about letting Daniel Lanois put together a band for him in New Orleans. They made Oh Mercy, an album with ambiance that I’d bet Dylan never felt before.
I previously wrote about his foray into blues, but I’ll say again, it was pleasingly surprising for me. He really learned new tricks, and surrounded himself with new people, wonderfully talented new sounds.
An extreme example is The Traveling Wilburys. Finding new bandmates by getting some of the most important people in rock history together in one garage? That’s one way to do it. (Comments on YT are crazy. Yes, great and beloved artists die. And do you want to know what? Always, there are more to fill the void.)
The second thing I want to say, and this is amazing, I would not understand phrasing without Dylan songs. He writes great lyrics and surrounds himself with great musicians. He’s been around a long time and has his place of import in music, and now, literature. But mostly I think of his phrasing.
I was driving home from a day on The Mountain. A glorious hike, hot and dry, sweaty; I was 40 mph on dusty back roads, and I noticed when this song came on. I listened and re-listened. I probably played this song 20 times on the way home, over the moon with the way he put words together.
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love
When the evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love
Everybody wants to hear that.
In the back of my mind, I could understand a feminist complaint about a man saying “make you feel my love”; turn it around, have a woman sing it.
The lyric here, the stories it can tell. Imagery. Mesmerizing mood. (Wow, this version is really excellent, too. Probably the best track I’ve managed for this blog piece.)
The air is getting hotter
There’s a rumbling in the skies
I’ve been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn’t haunt me like it did before
I’ve been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
My memory of Bob Dylan is forever linked with Aimee Mann. My friend Betsy made me go to an Aimee Mann show once. Sometime in the late 1990s. I mean “made me”; I was a willing accomplice, but I would not have known to choose the show on my own. Good show. She played an acoustic version of “Voices Carry”, after an unfortunate fan called out a request. She showed a lot of poise, and more importantly, it was a really beautiful rendition. There’s this clip, so it must happen to her with some frequency. (She was the lead singer for ‘Til Tuesday, you know. I’ve always wondered what happened on Tuesday.)
When I saw her, she had to muck around with chords a little bit, memory and practice, before she actually played it, solo, with her band patiently waiting in the dark. It felt spontaneous. Now I see she does that old song frequently; perhaps that night she rediscovered the song. Or she’s a good actor. I’ll never know.
She told this story about meeting Bob Dylan. He told her, I’m paraphrasing, “You’re pretty good. You sing a lot of those story songs. I don’t like those song stories, you know, songs that tell a story.” Unimpressed, Aimee said, “well, you only have yourself to blame, Bob.” There’s an expanded version of the story in this radio interview.
Let’s close with “Hurricane”, one of Dylan’s great story songs.
I totally screwed up the day! My first events began at 2pm, after lunch.
I arose at 6am, able to sleep no longer. I had coffee and breakfast and completed a crossword. It was early, I went back to bed thinking I’d get up again in 10 minutes to shower.
I slept for 3 hours.
I attended Chamber Music Grab Bag II. Transient Canvas completed the set with wow. They will have a new album out this Fall. I’ll need to check that out, and maybe you, too. http://www.transientcanvas.com/ You cannot believe what a marimba and bass clarinet can do on their own until you hear it yourself. I will offer a taste, but nothing compared to the meal they shared live.
I attended the Journalism Panel, What we Write About when we Write about New Music. Hosted by Amanda Cook (https://www.icareifyoulisten.com/) and Zoe Madonna (Boston Globe).
Generally, they reinforced some of my own thoughts. Write so people can read and support musicians needing the love and exposure. The mission at Community Noise is simply write about anything I want to write about, but I’m definitely trying to support new talent that I come across – from different musical avenues. At the Live Music Project, we are more focused. We support live music in the classical and contemporary realms and write about the people, ensembles, and programs that need and deserve attention.
My personal mission is to learn to write interesting things – imagery, phrasing, stories; whatever “interesting” means in the moment.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN sounds like a great institution. All volunteer writers – about 50 across the US and a couple of international contributors – produce articles about live shows, ensembles, and record releases. I’ll be checking them out. Maybe someday I can write something for them, too.
There was a great line attributed to Mike Hall (?) a violist attending NMG2018, “Be indispensable to the community, not just somebody on the stage.” That’s words that each of us can use in everything we do in our life.
Finally, I ended my participation with Concert II (not Concert I) in the Concerts in Parallel section. (it’s too dark to take notes in these concert halls – I need one of those pen lights.) F-Plus was good. A composition, Weft, by Mischa Salkind-Pearl, for violin, harmonica, and found objects was brilliant. A little bit of performance art and some beautiful music provided tender moments.
Tenth Intervention, featuring Paul Pinto, brought the house down with Eight Songs for a Mad King. In fact, he was not a Blue Dracula, as the picture seems to suggest, only a mad king.
Tomorrow will come again. I should have a fuller day immersed in new music.
This is the fourth year for New Music Gathering, a summit of composers and musicians that work in the classically-trained, contemporary music sphere. I am neither a composer nor a musician; there appears to be a small handful of us “other”. (I am accustomed to being part of the “other”, part of my punk ethos.) This year, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee is hosting the event. (I am a huge, life-long, Red Sox fan, which has no bearing on anything, except I am watching a game on TV as I type this.)
The morning of Day 1 began with a short, maybe 60-second, introduction and welcome, then bang! the first musical exercise. Stephen Miles, of Sarasota Florida, introduced us to his idea for “social virtuosity”. (Go ahead, say, “Sarasota” aloud; there’s hardly a better oral sensation.) This is not a virtuosity of performance; it is a virtuosity of listening and participating. Try to take in the whole. “Pitch Chess”, designed for anyone who wants to participate, is an exercise that governs space, movement, and sound.
A center line (blue tape) is marked across the stage, the “central flame”. Every participant begins on the center line, singing the same tone. Then, consider a grid; each participant may choose to move downstage (towards the audience) or upstage, or move stage left or stage right. If the participant moves downstage, they must sing a higher note; upstage a lower note. If someone moves between a higher note and the center line, then they must sing a note in between. Et cetera.
I did not sing. (Even though Stephen implored us that the participant does not need to be “a singer”, I was spared due to space constraints of the room, and wily maneuvering farther and farther back, behind everyone else.)
Interestingly, individual personalities come out. One person might test their range, moving downstage, and then all the way back upstage. I noted a woman, with pink hair, continually moving downstage, downstage, downstage; showing off the high range.
Even from the back of the room, this is an immersive experience. Fun!
(I’m skipping a lot of content, hitting those things that I want to address this evening.)
Helga Davis gave the keynote address. Danny Felsenfeld introduced her, saying she once delivered a version of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” that fit today.
Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
A long way from “Sweet Jane”, but I love that song, damn, could Lou Reed write a line.
It was an odd keynote, in that, Helga did not lecture, really, as much as ask questions and solicit audience participation.
That’s inclusion.
Helga finished the hour with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”; while I cannot reproduce that for you, imagine a song, any song, close your eyes, and imagine what she might do with your song:
Lou Reed is never far from my consciousness, and I cannot get him out of my mind now. Let’s take a break and listen to this.
Finally, I happened to meet Dean Rosenthal. He gave me a flier, a composition, for you, me, everyone, anyone to perform. Check out this piece at www.stonespiece.com. There’s taste of the fluxus movement going on here, a breath of Yoko Ono. Cool guy. Cool idea.
I feel like we need a third song, at least, to close the article. NMG put Lou Reed in my mind, so let’s listen to a Velvet Underground song, except, sort of honoring Helga Davis, let’s listen to the fucked-up version by Cowboy Junkies.
[A quick note about the lead photo. I came into Boston a day early and hung out with my nephew, who lives here. I snapped a photo of a seemingly appropriate book that I bought.]
This morning I had my first visitor from Iraq. Welcome! They found my article about Mark E. Smith and his passing. (I almost never know what the search terms were, but I’ll know if the click came from Google or Bing or FB, for example.)
It got me to thinking about people finding my blog, and how they get here. I cannot brag about the number of visitors or my number of followers but looking at some of the statistics offered to me as part of my blog space purchase, I can make some interesting observations.
By far the most visitors that I receive find my homepage. This is interesting because, if I advertise a post, on FB or otherwise, I will post a link for a new article, not for the homepage. I think people find the blog searching for information about community noise – a term associated with measuring and designing for noise impacts commercial aircraft have on neighborhoods near airports.
Most people find my blog from search engines; the other large referrers are WordPress (other bloggers), Facebook, and the Live Music Project (who I write for sometimes).
Most visitors, if not finding my home page, are searching a theme from the 30-day song challenge. It has been about 10 months since I completed that exercise. I still receive visitors searching for specific themes. By far the most-searched themes, and my offerings:
Day 4: A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget
The Cure — “Love Cats”
A song that moves you forward. I interpreted this request to mean a song that is “emotionally propelling”, perhaps somebody needs a lift from a bad day. I hope I help. If I’m right, that’s a lot of people searching for help through music. Everybody needs help, kudos to those that are trying to find it.
A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget. Is this almost the antithesis of the first one? It’s as if people are searching for hate. I need help interpreting this.
The 30-day challenge was a fun exercise, and while posting every day for a month was exhausting for me, I didn’t put a lot of thought into the longevity of what I was doing. People are still searching those themes and finding me; I think there are several variants of the theme out there.
Here’s a Day 31 challenge –the newest song on your living room playlist.
The Black Tones, “The Key of Black (They Want Us Dead)”
Local DJ played this yesterday afternoon at the close of the set. I will be learning more about them.
Lastly, I now have had visitors from 50 countries. The US is by far the most, the next five, in order, are Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Indonesia.
Good Sunday, everyone, and if you are a mom, Happy Mother’s Day.
I decided it was time to put together another playlist. I didn’t have a theme in mind, so I offer some random things that I’ve been listening to recently, tossed together with some new stuff that I hear on the radio as I write this. All but one track can be listened to at the YT link.
1. Nox Novacula – “The Path”
Local goth band. Really cool stuff. As far as I can tell, they’re only releasing their stuff digitally and, dammit, I like my LPs and CDs. Somebody needs to straighten these guys out.
2. The Temptations – “Papa was a Rolling stone”
For a couple of years now, I’ve been digging 1960s-1970s soul. When I’m home, an LP can find it’s way onto the stereo at any time. When I’m out around, there’s some on my MP3 player, so it comes up on random play. Such was the case one sunny Friday afternoon when I was walking over to my shop.
3. Pleasures – “Star and the Equal Time”
On Saturday evenings, DJ Sharlese has taken the reigns of the long-running radio show Audioasis, dedicated to local music. She’s finding some pretty good stuff, and plays a lot of good old stuff.
Unfortunately, … I couldn’t find this on YT. You can listen to it here: https://pleasures.bandcamp.com/track/star-and-the-equal-time
4. Sonic Youth – “My Friend Goo” I’m reading Kim Gordon’s pretty good memoir, Girl in a Band. After I’m done, I’m sure there’s a post or two to be written about this woman. In the meantime, I always loved Goo best.
5. Tom Waits – “Clap Hands” Rain Dogs is one of the most innovative albums that I’ve ever heard. Incredible. It’s one of the records in my collection I go back to say “damn” when I listen to it again.
6. Paul Simon – “Under African Skies”
Damn. Simon’s Graceland is one of the most innovative albums that I’ve ever heard. Incredible. That stanza, Joseph’s face was black as night |The pale yellow moon shone in his eyes |His path was marked | By the stars in the Southern Hemisphere | And he walked his days | Under African skies … really well phrased. It’s as good as any Dylan, and that’s a mouthful of praise.
7. Sly and the Family Stone – “You Can Make It If You Try”
This album, Stand!, sits in front of the stack, and generally outside the crate, patiently waiting for me to spin it again. And again.
8. Velvet Underground – “ Foggy Notion”
I have this Polygram sampler, 3 songs on Side A from The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, and Richard Thompson; and another 3 songs, one each, on the B Side. There used to be this cool record store, Uptown Records on Queen Anne; the buyer was named Ann (no relation), and we developed a little rapport; she’d always thank me for buying cool stuff, ‘cause that meant she got to go buy more cool stuff. (Instead of, you know, more Abba.) One night I walked up to the cash register with this and she simply froze; “Where did you find this?” She didn’t know the store had it and was mad that I was buying it and not her. And she still wouldn’t date me.
With a story like that, I’m having a hard time deciding to part with this, but I never actually listen to it. It’s an odd place to see VU playing.
9. Childish Gambino – “Saturday”
Watching Saturday Night Live, and this popped into my life. Good to listen to, and fun to watch all the dance and performance art going on. Must have been 25 people on stage. Damn.
10. Posse – “Voices”
Don’t forget to listen to Posse. They have more out now than the 7” I featured last year.
11. Goat Girl
Also, the new Goat Girl album is out – buy it on LP or CD from Rough Trade Records. I love these girls.
12. Ben Thomas – “Tangent 7”
The Live Music Project had it’s fourth birthday party last week, and I won a CD in the raffle. I don’t see how it could have been rigged in my favor, plus there must have been about 50 prizes. The ensemble might feature a bandoneon. Wikipedia says it’s a type of concertina “particularly popular in Argentina, Uruguay, and Lithuania.” OK, but I don’t know what a concertina is either. Look at the picture, duh, it’s a squeezebox.
Here’s a random note. It requires 6 clicks and a paste to add a video to a YT playlist. That’s when I already have the link for the song that I want to add. And it takes some hunting around to just find the place to create a new playlist. Couldn’t we design a better interface?
Checking out, the cashier asked if I found everything I was looking for. I explained that I did no homework for the day; I like to walk in and let things come to me.
For Round 1, I went to Silver Platters up in Lynnwood. Mid-morning by time I got there, there was no line to enter the shop, the clawing for one-offs had died down, and the long line for one of four cashiers was moving quickly. It was Record Store Day, 2018 – last Saturday, 21 April.
I picked up, all vinyl, a Brian Eno EP, a re-issue of Shiho and her Japanese electronica, a compilation of girl garage bands from the 1960s; on 10-inch vinyl I selected Sublime, Flaming Lips, and Noah Gundersen. Free stuff was 2 flats, huge flats, 18”-square, of Aretha Franklin and The Smiths.
Not homework, but I will admit that I had the local radio station playing Friday afternoon; they were reviewing material that would be available on Saturday. DJ Kevin was interviewing Matt Vaughan, owner of Easy Street Records and RSD co-founder. (Easy Street is a really cool store, and café, whenever I make it over the bridge to West Seattle. Think of it, next you find Seattle.)
Vaughan was delighted that Flaming Lips put something out interesting to listen to, but I couldn’t remember what exactly that was; I chose one of their two 10-inch records available. The DJ was excited that Noah Gundersen was playing a live set at a different record shop, but I couldn’t remember that I actually heard anything of his playing. My attention zeros in and fades away.
The thing about a 10-inch record, it could be a 45-rpm or a 33-rpm play; the label is vital. Not labeled, I started this one out at 33 and the music was great, but Noah’s voice sounded a little slow. Like he was mumbling in a cemetery soon after his own death. I moved the speed up to 45, and his voice sounds right, but the band sounds rather normal. Let that be a lesson to him.
Good grief the Sublime 10” is amazing. The ska/rap/punk/pop mixture has texture and themes; rhythms and just enough sounds in-between the reggae thing. I have listened to a lot of reggae over the years – local radio has had a Saturday morning reggae show for at least 33 years – but this is different. The reggae beat is not the dominate idea; other aspects of the composite sing out.
The Shiho stuff is a beautiful experience. My favorite record store experience: pick something up, don’t know anything about it, but something clicks inside. “Give it a shot.” Take it home. Cue it up. Whammo. Something cool, never knew it existed. Exploring the electronica and atmospheric music areas is pretty new to me; this was a good place to continue my brief education. The bright clear-pink vinyl is extra credit, which is normal for RSD.
Girls in the Garage, volume 3. On searching, there are at least 6 volumes to this series. It’s good we have a chance to remember the multiple precursors to Riot grrrl. I randomly provide one selection.
RSD 2018, round 2. Fun, but less eventful. I searched and noticed a couple of record stores that I didn’t know about. In the afternoon, I went down to Jigsaw Records, on the eastern edge of Ballard, not far from where I live. Cute little shop, a hole in the wall on a strip long known for funky drinking wells. I took a chance on Television Personalities, and it’s OK. I’m still digesting it. No free stuff.
I want to know. Did people celebrate Record Store Day this year? Where? What did you buy? What did you find to love?
On a bright, beautiful, sunny Spring day, I went spider hunting in a cemetery more than a century old. It wasn’t eerie or creepy, and my sister thinks I’m crazy. I am a volunteer for the arachnologist at Seattle’s Burke Museum. I guess the preferred term is “spider collecting.”
I picked up Rod in the morning and drove south towards Vader, not even a wide spot in the road off the I5 corridor, and not terribly far, in miles or spirit, from where I grew up. The cemetery is just out of town, but you’d never notice being in town. Sounds like a movie, Spider Hunt: Cemetery Watch
During the drive, I thought about spiders, trying to think of music that had something to do with our arachnid friends. I remembered the Lime Spiders, a psychedelic band from the 1980s, and I remembered not listening to them much. That would have to change.
They’re pretty good. Randomly, here are some tracks.
I learned many things during the day. A spider is an order of arachnid. Arachnids are a class of arthropods (joint-legged invertebrate animals). The arachnids also include scorpions, ticks, mites, harvestmen, and solifuges. (You are not alone, I had never heard of a solifuge.) (For those that don’t remember high school biology, the taxonomy goes like this: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.)
To catch, hunt, or collect spiders, and properly catalogue them, you need to pay attention to the habitat. On this Saturday, in this pleasant graveyard, we searched leaf mulch, moss, fir trees, shrubbery, grasses, tomb stones, fallen pine cones, and an out building (for house spiders). Across the road, in a clear-cut / new-growth forest area, we further searched the habitats of ferns and tall grasses. There are different techniques, which generally have something to do with trying to get the spider to “fall out of it’s habitat” so you can see it. (The exception is the wolf spider, which quickly runs amok in 20 directions, trying to avoid you. I caught several and felt badly for the little guys.) For example, hunting in leaf mulch: you pick up some mulch, put into a wire-mesh shaker, shake onto a white sheet, and see what falls out. Bits of dirt and partially-degraded plant matter, lots of little beetles and ants, centipedes, and other creepy crawly things, and spiders.
a male Callobius pictus, sifted from mosspoor guy about to meet his doom – a swim in alcohol for preservationSome sort of crab spider
Of course, there’s “Boris the Spider” from The Who. But you don’t need kill spiders; be not afraid – the spider just wants to eat bugs, and those also probably freak you out.
Rod wants you to know that the house spider that you guys call a “daddy long-legs” is not a spider, it is a harvestman. It is an arachnid. It is a myth that its venom is poisonous to humans. It is a myth that its fangs are too small to bite you – it doesn’t bite you because you are not its prey.
Rod was telling me that his favorite music was primarily bebop jazz. Benny Goodman had a trio, sometimes quartet, that played some innovative jazz; of course, he’s more well known for his work in the big band swing era. Benny Goodman — “Where Or When”
And for jazz vocals, he prefers Anita O’Day. I’ll feature“Honeysuckle Rose”.
avorite record store experience: pick something up, don’t know anything about it, but something clicks inside. “Give it a shot.” Take it home. Cue it up. Whammo. Something cool, never knew it existed. Exploring the electronica and atmospheric music areas is pretty new to me; this was a good place to continue my brief education. The bright clear-pink vinyl is extra credit, which is normal for RSD.
