Exile on Drone Street

a year running

2012-01-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

A Documentation of Running in 2011
OR
Proof of A Less Than Mild Case of Obsessive Compulsive DisorderLast November, I tweaked my knee. I'm not even sure how it happened; I woke up one morning for work, and it was mildly swollen. Flexing it to walk up stairs or elevators was almost impossible until the joint was warmed-up & stretched-out, around noon. I attribute it to walking through some urban fields on the way to return some books at the Irvington library branch. I stepped in a divot, or slid momentarily through a congealed pile of dog mess, twisting slightly some tendons or ligaments.

View NIFS Indoor Track in a larger map
NIFS Indoor Track. 97 runs; 417 miles.

After that, I was mostly laid up for nearly a month, beyond some stationary biking as December 2010 progressed. I joined NIFS, a fantastic gym at IUPUI, and began doing some bike/jog workouts the last week of December, before Amelia, Wes, and I drove 12-hours to spend a week with my family at a beach house in the Florida panhandle. A stovepipe of a building, 6 flights of steep stairs were required to get to the top floor, a small, lofted room, on the floor of which Amelia & I were sleeping on a mattress (well, mattress in name only). Climbing up & down those stairs for the week really strained my knee at first, but by the last couple days, I was feeling noticeably stronger. The stairs had healed my knee! Either that, or a week's worth of Yuengling Black & Tan had lubricated my body's joints so they felt no pain.

View Neighborhood Running Route in a larger map
Neighborhood running route. 54 runs; 257.4 miles.

On returning to Indianapolis, I made a goal to work-out/run 150 times in the year. I'd never paid for a gym membership before, and I'm a particularly cheap bastard, so I wanted to make it worthwhile. What began as a 3-times-a-week chore, morphed into 4 or 5 days a week, plus stationary bike riding...and eventually, into long runs once a week to train up for the Carmel (Half) Marathon (follow the link for my entry on the race itself).

View Canal Route 1 in a larger map
Canal running route. 25 runs; 130.5 miles.

July came, and running became a sort of morning obsession. In the height of Hoosier heat, I ran 20 times, each one reducing me to a pile of sweat on the front stoop, dripping random droplet constellations onto the dry concrete while stretching. The runs had become less training, and more therapeutic---necessary in their exertion-level; I needed it to clear my mind, to feel alright inside my world. I didn't see that coming.

View Bellingham Neighborhood Route in a larger map
Bellingham neighborhood running route. 3 runs; 12 miles.

Took some days off while on vacation, but I still took my shoes & ran neighborhood routes, not to mention did a lot of walking & biking around the beautiful Pacific Northwest. When I returned, I switched back to afternoon running, much to the pleasure of my digestive system, which has never become completely assimilated to morning runs (well; it responds in kind, if you get my drift). Internally, running was now something I felt weird if I didn't do. Even on days off (which I do need; 3 or 4 days in a row will render me stiff as a board until mid-morning, at least); I don't feel quite as lucid as on running days.

View Trail Route in Land o' Lakes in a larger map
Land o' Lakes nature trail. 1 run; 5 miles.

I began the year with the goal of 150 runs, though by late Fall I was chalking up a good four every week, which continued through the early winter months with the help of an indoor track. I pushed through the holiday season on the same schedule, hitting 182 official run/work-outs by the end of 2011, while at the same time getting back to my high school playing weight of 145. What can I say, I have the arms of an early middle-schooler.

View Carmel 2011 Half-Marathon in a larger map
Carmel Half-Marathon. 1 run; 13.1 miles.

My total for the year? As best as I can figure, 841 miles in 182 runs. On just two pairs of shoes, which have served me pretty well. Guess I'm about due for another pair; my goal for 2012 is 200 runs.

View Monon Trail in a larger map
Monon Trail. 1 run; 6 miles.

january'd

2012-01-04T19:38:00.000-05:00

Woody Allen's Alice

2010 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove

Daniel Kalder's absurd Russian travelogue, Strange Telescopes.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar, compendium of food+wartime writing.

"Lo Boob Oscillator" off of Stereolab's compilation, Switched On, Vol. 2.

"Seneca" off of Tortoise's LP, Standards.

haiku

2011-12-28T23:15:00.003-05:00

amelia's mom got me a set of haikubes for Christmas. tonight, while making-and-eating a ham-bell pepper-onion pizza, amelia and i, and wes & sarah, all completed haiku and read them while snapping and/or golf-clapping. here are the results (parentheses are the "theme" of the poem as determined by the dice. apologies for any punctuation I screwed up.):

sarah(a dream about my work life)

Her putrid limbs up;
gleeful he killed the sweet girl.
Desperate for fire.

amelia(a reflection on my romantic life)

Finally the tiger
bust hellbent between hard limbs.
Dilemma eats heart.

drew(a dream about my childhood)

My brother--A grand,
greased villain, slowly looks
for my limbs. Torture.

wes(a reflection on my childhood)

Baby villain sang
through torture-esque lips, after
the ravenous war.

back to the present

2011-12-21T14:02:00.001-05:00

things i have been up to lately:

Writing album features (here and here) for Musical Family Tree, the Indiana-related digital music repository.

Went to Florida with Amelia to see my parents, who reside in Land O' Lakes...not the home of the butter. We walked beaches, ate fresh shrimp & grouper, saw botanical gardens, rode bikes on nature trails, slept-in, made pancakes, drank lots of coffee, saw dolphins, river otters, and all kinds of cranes, visited my Mom's co-op, introduced my parents to Cuban food...had a great time.

My parents & I outside their house in Florida. I think we were all looking into the sun...which is out 95% of the time. Now I remember why people move there...

An extra-sauced Thanksgiving due to generous tastings of Amelia's cousin's cider...

A mini-roadtrip on a freezing & rainy day to Cincinnati to see German experimentalist/improviser/elder-statesman Roedelius, in an art-space converted from a century-old brewery & warehouse, the Mockbee. also ate one of the finer meals of our life at Senate Pub---my review here.

One of the best live shows I've ever seen...(6-part vocal harmonies? Yes, please.) Enjoy this nugget filmed in their home-base of Athens, GA.

A month prior, roadtrip to Columbus to see a recently reunited (and completely awesome) Olivia Tremor Control at the fabulous Wexner Center, preceded as always by the irresistible Clever Crow pizza.

Released (digitally-only, for now, vinyl to follow in February) the new Everything, Now! album, Do It On The Moon, via the wonderful musician's tool Bandcamp. Check it out here.

Cover of the new Everything, Now! record, Do It On The Moon. Painting by Allen, our guitarist.

Read at least three incredible books, Steinbeck's East of Eden, and Orhan Pamuk's Snow, and Dexter Filkins' The Forever War.

Watched way too much 30 Rock / Parks & Recreation via Netflix, and finished the currently-streamable, anxiety & stress-producing, overall way too depressing seasons of Mad Men. Also discovered, thanks to my brother Wes, the British-comedy Peep Show, with its near-constant internal monologue.

One of the best moments of Season 4...had me rolling around on the couch with awkward laughter.

Third annual post-Thanksgiving bash filled our house with good friends & good times. Along with breaking the fire-code for bodies in the building, lentil stew & cranberry cake were served, along with a baby keg from Sun King, and aforementioned ciders. As a sign of getting old, the night slowed down pretty early & ended with a sleepy round of Scattergories (I blame this on so many English degrees in one place).

Two impromptu basement recording sessions with amigos Andy & Tyler have produced roughly 8 workable tunes. Went into the basement with just ideas, came out hours later with live tracks recorded through a 4-track into Garageband. Mixing & Chicago-apartment-overdub session is imminent for January 2012, with an internet release to follow shortly thereafter, with the nom de plume of.......well, I can't say. "D's P" for short.

Lastly and most recently, trip to Louisville for the family Christmas. Stayed in my sister's sweet new home, dined at the now-traditional Irish Rover (been coming here for a good 2/3rds of my life...yikes!), exchanged some small gifts, and helped cook a ridiculously awesome Christmas dinner of beef tenderloin, cheesy potatoes, balsamic brussels sprouts, garlic & butter green beans, homemade bread, and strawberry & cream cheese jello. Decadent to say the least. Who knew we'd all be able to cook so well! Oh, and can't forget the yearly treat of Buckeyes, as made by Jennifer. Thanks sis! Now, back to running...

west, vol. 8

2011-11-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

-i woke up next to the bald & bearded andreas butler. considering how many times i've lived with the dude, this may have been the first time waking up next to the man. though the bed was the most comfortable thing i'd slept in or on since leaving indiana, i knew i had to get up. the pound of bacon in the fridge (or was it two?) wasn't going to cook itself. i wandered down to the kitchen, started some coffee, and grated several pounds of potatoes, diced a few onions, tossing them together in the biggest plastic bowl i could find. had to get the starch started first, essential in an 8-person breakfast.

-unfortunately, only two of the burners on the stove functioned, and they were the smaller ones. i turned them both to high, began sauteeing the taters-n-onions, warming the oven to keep everything evenly done. midway through the bacon fry, bodies began to rise, lurching out of sleep towards the downright magical combination of onion, oil, bacon, and coffee. i don't know what the first explorers ate while winding out of the mountain passes towards the pacific ocean, but i like to imagine it was the same combination of pork fat, rough-ground coffee, and starch. i am nothing if not a descendent of lewis & clark.

The scene of the crime. Modelo-addled as I was, I managed to finishing everything simultaneously, a heroic breakfast achievement.

-after finishing the potatoes & bacon, slipped them in the oven and whisked two dozen eggs with some milk & a block of american-orange cheddar. scrambling these over a small burner took longer than expected; tyler stepped in to keep stirring (and sipping the day's first brew) while i washed the hot tub & cigar off of me.

-post-breakfast & coffee, we headed out in two car-loads in search of the Nooksack Falls, a winding drive towards the end of the highway. along the way we passed strung-out lines of bikers, whose ability to ride that far uphill disturbed me almost as much as the motorcycle-death-wish-brigade who flew around tight corners, passing a dude (me) driving another dude's (chris) car dangerously close to said bikers. still, it was over 70-degrees, sunny, and the day soon mellowed when we reached the turn-off to the falls.

The top-third of the roughly 90-foot falls. Signs indicated at least 8 people had gone over to meet their fate at the ageless rocks and broken trees below. Despite the warnings, edging up to a precipice was needfully done---not often can you experience the simultaneous feeling of being so close to oblivion & so close to the constancy of nature.

-even when the falls began to busy with a few hikers & tourists, i still felt drawn to the strange age of the place, carved with the sweat of the even-nearer glacier over thousands of years. having recently watched werner herzog's cave of forgotten dreams, another examination of the tiny glint of humanity in the timeless eye of the universe, the falls gave me that sense of being incredibly young, unimportant, and vague, merely sucking up as much sunshine and intense pine aroma as possible in a space more old & venerable than all the cathedrals of the world laid end-to-end.

-enough philosophizing already. after wandering in the woods a bit, getting close enough to the stream for a brave few to take a freezing, fear-no-bacteria gulp, and ben climbing into a tall, hollow tree-trunk; we decamped in search of a trail that might take us up the mountainside a bit. unfortunately, upon finding it, we realized it would involve a 15-mile drive on a gravel path till we even got to the beginning of the trail. we had laid in no supplies, so settled for the horseshoe bend trail, which ran along the Nooksack a few miles further downstream from the falls.

Contemplating the odd notion that I should swim in water meant for mammals with a coat of body fat that weighs more than my car. I would soon give in to this temptation; glacier-flow-swimming as performance-art.

-noting that "bear season" was in effect, the crew made sure to permeate the early-afternoon river's edge with various bird calls, alien mating sounds, caribou grunts, and what was soon to be determined to be the true & actual call of a bear, "huuyh-ahhh!" after weaving up and down the riverbank for a time, the trail eventually came to rest a a spot looking up into the mountains, logs laying across large stones created swirling pools of ice blue water, and small stacks of disc-like stones adorned the sun-bleached dusty rock bed. after building some stacks of our own, the sun had me sweating and shirtless, and i realized that...yes, i needed to swim in the nooksack.

-part of the river had been almost sealed off by a fallen tree, and the fast-running current present everywhere else merely swirled to a crawl in a six-foot circle of two-foot deep, amazingly ice-clouded water. i put my hand in, and it felt cold, but do-able. after cajoling some dudes to join me, and none obliged, the crowd was getting restless; it was swim-or-go-home. next to a sun-soaked boulder, i checked the trail for square-looking hikers, then shucked shoes & clothes down to underwear, and took a deep breath. oh shit!

Pre-dip phase of Operation Tea-Bag the Nooksack. At this point, I'm thinking, "This is very probably not the best idea I've ever had." Soon, I would be in extreme pain and unable to form a cogent defense of what I'd done...

-i stepped into the water. "hey, this isn't bad," i said out-loud. a couple seconds later, as i began descending to get my waist underwater, i realized i couldn't feel my feet. at all. by the time the water hit my torso, both my legs were shrieking in pain. i probably began howling, and jumped up & out of the water. compelled by my near-religious experience, maxson doffed his footwear to wade in. the second voyage was worse than the first---too cold to make the five-foot run back to shore, we opted for the tree trunk suspended over the water, letting the air put feeling back in my toes. courage summoned (or stupidity swallowed); the gap was bridged and seventy degree sand stomped upon in an attempt to regain feeling. the serious pain subsided, and the warm walk back to the vehicles was welcome, fake wildlife calls and all.

part nine & rest of day to follow

west, vol. 7

2011-10-18T13:20:00.002-04:00

friday
-one of those mornings where you don't wake up, but instead slowly climb some dank, steep stairs out of a fetid basement of unconsciousness. mouth felt like someone's sock had been there, and knowing how many dudes i was surrounded with...that was a distinct & realistic possibility.

-all the dudes roused, minus ben (unmoving next to the papazon chair) and chris (worked till like 8am), and after i downed several glasses of water, we headed out into a sun that pierced my level of consciousness. yowch.

-it was andy's weekend, so we walked down the hill towards a local krispy kreme. the only knowledge that existed in my brain at the moment was, "a doughnut would be a bad idea in my current condition." besides, have you looked at a krispy kreme doughnut conveyor line? i did, and it was being flushed with a clear liquid that i would assume was water, but that seemed foul nonetheless. big ole watery doughnut, no thank you, sir!

-tyler & i went next door, to jack-in-the-box (j-in-the-b), a fast food chain slowly infiltrating the midwest. shamefully, i got some greasy breakfast combo and coffee, in hopes of making it through the day. their ordering cashiers had been recently replaced with self-service machines, which i navigated, empathizing with whatever low-level, visored employee had lost their job to a gentrified U-scan machine. on the other hand...machines don't make mistakes, and they count out change at a remarkable rate.

J-in-the-B: way creepier than the King.
-from here, a quick walk up the sooty and exhaust-filled northern strip of aurora ave. to...k-mart. stepping in was akin to time-jumping back to 1993, which was likely the last year the carpet or wall-decoration or 50% of the stock was changed. the mission here were cheap swim trunks for andy & tyler; and (like the married couple they are) they soon picked out matching suits. standing outside next to the quarter-powered carousel (just like the one in kokomo, it seemed); i could've been 5 years old again. oh, except for that raging hangover, coffee-in-hand, and whiskey-clogged pores. still, coming back out into the sun, unflaggingly strong over the mountain range...it was like being born.

-walked back uphill to the apartment, where we roused ben, and set to getting cleaned up, re-packing, and setting off. luckily, 8 males can accomplish this task with the least amount of vocalization necessary. after the jet fumes, whiskey, sleep-sweat, and morning sheen had been washed off, ben retrieved from the distant shores of unconsciousness, and i filled 2 grocery bags with my belongings, with a sleeping mat to complete my hobo accessory set; we finally set out, well past noon, heading northwards.

-traffic was heavy, and i failed to provide good tunes despite accepting the shotgun position in chris's car, ben & andy riding in the rear. luckily, chris had a copy of watch the throne, which was dutifully spun a couple times. or was it kanye's solo record? brain-cramp. ben was "baby-mousing" it while we wove through heavy traffic, getting to mt. baker highway before turning off at the local bellingham costcutter, which after a pre-emptive investigation, looked swell enough to stock the larder from. randy's crew was way behind, having stopped already for food & liquor. so, we left ben asleep in a grassy parking-lot median, and trudged across a few acres of asphalt to round table pizza. filled bellies with hot pizza & even convinced andy to spot me double-digits worth of croutons from the salad bar. what a gentleman.

A better motto would be, "Hella better than Pizza Hut," though that is less Arthur-ian sounding. And I think my crouton obsession dates back to accompanying my little brother and parents to the rare Outback Steakhouse excursion, during which we would beg and/or pilfer some croutons from their salad. Large, square, full of dried cheese and sodium, and more dusty than a desert boot...I can still taste them.

-the other car having arrived (and ben having not yet been arrested for vagrancy; though he was victim of an attempt to lure him & his valid ID into a criminal scheme of returning merchandise to a local chain store...), we stocked the grocery cart with eggs, bacon, butter, bread, bratwurst, baked beans, salad, bing cherries, chips, potatoes, onions, bottled water, apples, bananas, milk, various condiments, and beer. lots of beer. and some various challenge foods for andy to eat (tomatoes; funky smoked european semi-soft cheese; aforementioned cherries). had we filled another bag...we couldn't have fit it all in both cars. and that included any & all lap storage.

"The Bounty of Snoqualmie": photo by A. S. Maxson. This would last through Night One. Yes, that is a bottle of Old Overholt Rye Whiskey peeking from the back of the pile. Also invisible was a case of Modelo Especial, and more notably, a Deschutes Black Butte XXI. Curated by the photographer, our collection also featured, from right, Lagunitas IPA, Maui Coconut Porter, a nod to the classic Rainier, Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale, Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Ale, Oskar Blues Mama's Little Yella Pils, Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale, Alaskan White Ale, and Goose Island Matilda. To justify the last choice...Ben does live in Hawaii...has to get his Goose Island fix when he can.

-the scenic mt. baker highway has to be one of the most beautiful drives in the country. from the sea-level bay in bellingham, straight into the foothills of the Cascade mountain range, the road rolls through hills, farms, ranches, begins to narrow and pass through more conifer stands, eventually criss-crossing and following the glacier-fed Nooksack River. other than the occasional real estate sign, and coffee shops advertising wireless, there was scant indication of development. it all seemed fairly restrained, and not over-commercialized. the foothills eventually became sheer spires, coated in the green grass of late summer, carpeted in trees save for where some clear-cutting had buzzed them to the scalp.

-anticipation was building, overriding the hangover for the first time in the day. we stopped at a small gas station in the town of glacier to retrieve the housekeys, and drove another mile or so to a small, gated neighborhood, sparsely populated with modest homes, single-wide trailers, and thick groves of trees. our cabin was a-frame-esque, though it had a curve like the hull of a ship. two-stories, the insides gleamed with timbers, and had a gas stove, big kitchen, and dining room that doubled as a sunroom, protruding in glass-windowed-walls from the rear of the house. did i mention there was a hot tub? oh yes. most crucial hot tub.

Photo by R. Hawkins. Piling in to the ol' cabin. I was currently failing to operate the key in the sliding door. I blame the mountain moisture. Chris soon schooled me on lock operations, but graciously allowed me to remain indoors for the duration of the trip.

-beds were claimed (i ended up in the "master" with the bachelor, himself); drawers were opened, the hot tub was turned up, and the septic system was thoroughly tested. the fridge filled up and i busted out the Deschutes XXI Reserve, poured everyone 2.5oz, and we toasted Andy. Unfortunately, the grill was charcoal, so we settled for oven-broiled brats, but not before andy attempted to impose his will on the booze-weakened masses, watching the owen wilson/eddie murphy awesome/awful I Spy.

-having dinner loosened up the livers, and in no time verbal gauntlets were being thrown, cigars were cut, and the hot tub cover thrown into the weeds. oh yeah...we forgot to turn the temperature down to a reasonable level. steam was rolling off the water, and if you remained in for 5 minutes, the sweat poured off of any exposed skin. that said, once you braved the burning, it felt like my muscles were being liquified, the summer's stress and previous evening's self-abuse evaporating into the Cascadian starlit night. drink of choice for a 150-degree hot tub...modelo especial. the night ended prior to midnight, nary a person electing to play a round of Mousetrap that had been assembled during dinner.

Photo by R. Hawkins. Andy demonstrating the veritable cojones needed to brave the hot tub on Night One. Possibly the best picture of the weekend...makes me wish for a time-machine. I'd go back in a second.

september 2011 mix; desert interlude

2011-10-05T14:27:00.005-04:00

Download link here.
1) Group Bombino - Tenere (from Guitars from Agadez Vol. 2)
2) Bob Dylan & The Band - Million Dollar Bash (from Basement Tapes)
3) Tall Dwarfs - Think Small (from Fork Songs)
4) Yo la Tengo - Moonrock Mambo (from Summer Sun)
5) The Olivia Tremor Control - A Sleepy Company (from Black Foliage Animation Music Vol. One)
6) CAN - She Brings the Rain (from Soundtracks)
7) Alice Coltrane - Spiritual Eternal (from Eternity)
8) Stereolab - Margerine Rock (from Margerine Eclipse)
9) Oneida - Preteen Weaponry Pt. 2 (from Preteen Weaponry)
10) Talk Talk - Ascension Day (from Spirit of Eden)
11) Pink Mountaintops - Cold Criminals (from Axis of Evol)

Coming back from vacation, I felt like I was going through a desert of the mind/soul. Too much enjoyment of life? Distinct lack of liver function? Either way, I was in a pre-fall funk, a quiet mood; this playlist is reserved even when loud.

"Tenere" begins in the desert, literally, with the call of a camel. Group Bombino recorded the acoustic numbers live in the open air...somewhere in Niger. Released by the always spectacular Sublime Frequencies, the dry, hypnotic guitar chords mingle with a wash of handclaps and atmosphere---meditation through sound.

The inestimable guitar skills of Group Bombino soundtracked my visit to...Batesville, IN, of all places, for a wedding in the casket capital of Indiana.

"Million Dollar Bash"...oh Basement Sessions, how I ignored you for so long. High on humor and harmony, this shambles of a gospel sing-a-long is just about perfect. This is the record that invented alt-country, and I don't think anyone's topped it since.

Long-running Kiwi collaborators Tall Dwarfs usually wrap their pop gemstones in harsh blankets of keyboard skronk, acoustic hi-speed strumming, drum machine, and layered nasally vocals. "Think Small" is an aberration of their catalog, a plaintive melody backed by a single-tracked vocal take that ruminates on being, "Like life is nothing at all...I will think small." Autumnal sentiment, for sure.

"Moonrock Mambo" is YLT in silent/slinky funk mode, a melange of small sounds wrapped around witty wordplay. Colored in around the edges by squiggles of guitar feedback, marimba, piano, and tape loops; this is an exercise in minimalism and humor. With the inestimable Georgia providing just the right jazzy shuffle of a beat, this is a connect-the-dots that you can put your pencil down and just smile at.

On the other side; maximalism. "A Sleepy Company" wants every sound inside of it. Vocal harmonies are in-front here, but behind the mirror is a circus of brass, sound samples, distorted bass, fractured strings, and God-knows-what-else. Restraint isn't a strong point, but I trust OTC in their maximalist ode. When the violin hits double-time just before the static-loaded bridge, the hairs raise on the back of my neck.

CAN without the mighty Jaki Liebzeit...is it really CAN? This track would appear to answer, "Yes." Malcolm spins a typically fractured tale about some sort of rain goddess, there are ravens, magic mushrooms, and yellow men, naturally. Anchored by 4 notes from bassist Holger Czukay, and some spidery blues from guitarist Michael Karoli. The only experimentalism present here is the distorted guitar that seeps in from somewhere in the background. This is CAN at its most relaxed; you can almost visualize them leaving the tracking room one at a time after a 3 a.m. session.

I first heard Alice Coltrane while driving across the Pennsylvania wilderness in the middle of the night, my caffeined-brain being washed over by swells of harp, scattershot drumming, funky bass. "Spiritual Eternal" is Alice on electric organ, playing notes in such a way as to almost render them robotic, monochromatic, synthetic. When just over bass and drums, it is almost overpowering in its note-heavy measures. When the orchestra comes in; it is relief by numbers, the swell-and-pulse swinging slowly through time, battling her single organ. Beautiful.

Cover for Alice Coltrane's Eternity. Note the dichotomy between the luridly blue sky and pale, dry grass; the electric organ on the album reacts in the same way to the rest of her usually-organic sound.

Masters of the vintage organ, Stereolab accelerate through "Margerine Rock" with a staccato organ riff into beautifully sing-song choruses. The song lives at the edge of blast-off; finally reaching the point 2-plus minutes in, with a single note guitar solo bending and pitching like a kite in the wind. Rather than let it run its course to the ground, they break it off.

"Preteen Weaponry Part 2" is part of a 3-song album that itself is part of a 3-album cycle. Which makes "Part 2" the absolute middle, the hazy mid-ground, which begins with a distorted blast of electronic something-or-other. These distorted blasts, like a nearing industrial giant, like a factory collapse, like an approaching banshee; this is the tone of the song, omnipresent over slowly-thickening tribal drum-and-guitar stew. It is oppressive and haunting, yet free and purging at the same time. Go ahead; breathe.

Operating in a similar realm of experimentation and space, "Ascension Day" is an exercise in lush restraint, from the percolating stand-up bass, to the retreating, skittering drum-beat that leads into the song. Jagged guitars slash and retreat, leaving only vocalist Mark Hollis howling over a rhythm-section and gospel organ. In place of a chorus, we get a strangled instrumental of vibrating strings and distant brass. Talk Talk is often a rhapsodic exercise in exorcism; demons be gone in this room where righteous sound vibes are all that remain.

Cover for Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. Fantastic.

Go: acoustic strum-a-thon backed by skree-feedback, thumping bass notes, school of Mo Tucker drum-stylings, and a "beep" that sounds like a trash truck is putting it in reverse...and you're in the blindspot. "Cold Criminals" builds to a religious fervor via a gradually increasing static swirl, and Stephen McBean's drawl that moves from lackadaisical to prophetic as it raises in pitch and volume. Pink Mountaintops make it sound so easy; but pop genius this dirty and inspired and so damn simple sounding is anything but easy.

west, vol. 6 (interlude: maps)

2011-09-06T16:41:00.004-04:00

During my travels, I developed a slight obsession for mapping. I've been using Google Earth (and maps) for a couple years at work, mostly unsuccessfully, but have finally found an outlet plotting points of interest, bike & hiking routes, and running loops. Running routes actually provided my entry-point; while running my neighborhood route at home, I plotted it via Google Maps so I could calculate the distance I was running.

View Neighborhood Running Route in a larger map
And here-in lies another obsession; when I began running almost 18 months ago, I began to keep strict track of the distance and time of each session, perhaps a way of tracking my improvement, but more likely an outgrowth of my somewhat obsessive-compulsive personality.

The small 4-bedroom house in the West-side 'burbs of Kokomo necessitated that my younger brother, Wes, share a room with me, in which we had homemade bunk beds, a Nerf basketball drawer, more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles paraphernalia than would seem financially possible, and most notably, a 1960s-era map of the United States, measuring at least 6-feet across, that my Dad had salvaged from a defunct classroom set-up. I remember plotting points and routes on the map, far before travelling by plane. Most years, our vacation consisted of driving south to Nashville, Tennesee, to visit relatives, or further south to Gulf Shores, Alabama, where we camped in pine-covered swamps at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.

View Canal Route 1 in a larger map
Despite its flaws, the canal in downtown Indianapolis is a great running route. Though I hadn't ran on it till this weekend, it is free of street-crossings & most exhaust smell. Despite the Labor Day weekend ignorant pedestrians, long, reclined bikes piloted by poor-steering 12-year-olds, and fat, Segway-riding, jean-wearing tourists; running the smooth stones alongside the slow-moving, blue-green canal was a welcome relief from the neighborhood route full of potholes, buckled pavement, loose dogs, and throttling mufflers.

I remember running my finger along routes in-between cities, wondering how so many cities could be clustered in the tiny states of New England, and reading strange place names in my head; Nogales, Butte, Amarillo, Baja California. I had never been west of Missouri at the time, and so the West held a magical sort of realism, a place so full of names that it wasn't quite real at the time, more akin to the maps I pored over at the beginning of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which had equally strange names; Lothlorien, Mordor, the Shire.

Detail of LOTR map. I really like the contour lines denoting where the waters of Middle Earth begin. Just as when I was a kid, I always wonder what lay to the East of these mystically named lands...was it just vast nothingness? An evil worse than Mordor? I wondered the same thing about the edge of space, once I realized the universe was constantly expanding, which meant there was a constantly moving edge. Would you bump into it with your nose, like a sliding door made of glass?

At the age of 22, driving out West was a revelation in distance. Armed with only a free road atlas, highlighter, and a folder full of printed directions, we traversed the Deep South, Southwest, West Coast, Pacific Northwest, and Great Plains. All of the greens, pale yellows, and oranges of the 1960s canvas-backed map came to life in New Orleans, Albuquerque, Sacramento, and Spokane. The craggy-ridged mountain ranges were no longer bold textures drawn over blood-orange hued terrain; they were omnipresent in the horizon, looming over Seattle, obscuring San Francisco, bisected by a road lashed out of Salt Lake City that threw us out on to the plateau.

View Cabin in a larger map
Detail of the cabin weekend. Left point is the cabin, right point is Nooksack Falls. The green line is a trail running along the Nooksack River. More details on my encounter with the glacial-fed stream in my next post, West, Vol. 6.

Returning to the cool greens and yellows of Indiana was relief, though not temperature-wise, long-hair and patchy beard only exacerbating the 90-degee, humid weather. But on the eyes, after escaping through the harsh blues and yellow-browns of Colorado and Nebraska, the lush greens of Indiana, pole-straight cornfields occasionally interrupted by lush stands of elm, maple, and oak, the low-lying scruff of soybean leaves that seem a single solid mass until perpendicular to the exacting rows; the map wasn't lying with its colors, though accepting that I had traversed such a visual spectrum was still hard to swallow.

View Chuckanut Ridge Hike in a larger map
Hike taken on the last day of the 2011 Western Swing. Though the rise in elevation was only around 1300 feet over a couple miles, it was more taxing than I originally thought. Near the top of the ridge, I finally sprinted uphill as long as I could, bored by the interminable climb that had not yet produced a view. Ah, the patience of the Internet age. Less than 5 minutes later, we were rewarded with a sudden clearing on a sheer rock cliff, looking over Lake Padden to Mt. Baker.

Returning home from the West last October, after flying out over Mt. Rainier, the only identifiable Indiana object was Conner Prairie, identified by its stationary hot air balloon hanging stagnant over a quilt-work of crop fields and encroaching suburbia. There was no relief in this return, and there was none in my most recent return either, the night landscape of Indianapolis disorienting and unfamiliar, with not even a Lucas Oil Stadium sighting to grant me directional bearing. Again I had flown out in the height of a sunny day, passing Mt. Rainier while my seatmate took pictures out of the window. She noticed me staring, and paused so I could get a good look. I glanced, and realized that the view wasn't one that I could get tired of, wasn't one that I wished to leave.

View Bellingham Overlook in a larger map
A bike-ride-turned-hike to a spectacular ridge overlooking the city of Bellingham and the bay. An army of 30+ mountain bikers passed us near the top of the ridge, though I was glad we left our bikes at the trailhead a mile back. The trail opened to a dusty, street-wide path atop the ridge, and we plopped on rocks and tree stumps, eating blueberries and basil-wheat bread with goat cheese, warmed by the sun.

west, vol. 5

2011-09-02T15:50:00.005-04:00

this day was epic, and deserved its own post.

thursday
-woke up to yet another beautiful day. showered, then basked in the sun on randy's balcony. ben & tyler were up shortly, and we headed out again on the 5, aiming for the international district...chinatown. goal: to feast on barbecue. while waiting at the stop, discussion turned towards the different shades and colors of...yams. ben was resistant toward the idea of asian purple yams, saying that he hated anything that was purple out of principle. a woman waiting under the shelter (who happened to be wearing an ostentatious, sequined, royal purple blouse) commented, "well, do you hate me then?" oh, bus-stop talk...
-made it to kau kau, well in time for the lunch special; a mere 5 bones for bbq pork, pork fried rice, hot-n-sour soup, and your choice of things like grilled prawns, duck breast, spare ribs...you get the idea. tyler went for the duck breast, i had the spare rib, and ben, ever the wildcard, got some lamb curry. bone-in, of course. all this and a large pot of hot tea resulted in a serious glow/buzz...not unlike muncie's history NY House (now the might savage's). good thing, too, for upon exiting, clouds had descended upon washington for the first time past noon during my visit.

beard papa's...best gorton's fisherman look-a-like/sailor sellin' cream puffs in any metro seattle food court. i mean, i trust this man.
-wandered around the international district, including passing by the seattle pinball museum. alas, it was not open, so we peered through the dusty windows onto the game machines. well...i did need my quarters for the bus. we eventually passed into uwajimaya, a market on steroids, packed with a bookstore, full grocery, food court, housewares, toys, and enough strange food and drink to spend the better part of an hour staring at. purple yam ice cream? got some ginger candy and a coconut chocolate bar for amelia, and stared at the cream puffs from the aforementioned beard papa.
-upon leaving uwajimaya, and finding an orca card machine (if that is an LOTR reference, excellent work); we headed towards the bay. wandered through pioneer square, and happened upon waterfall garden, an interesting oasis, though admittedly not a place you can really sit and talk. unless you enjoy yelling at your friends...so, bostonians...anyhow. made it to the bay, where people-watching was done, and tyler couldn't resist the siren call of the artisan pump organ outside ye olde curiosity shop. for $.50, i didn't expect such a bone-rattling blast of sheer organ. whoa.

one of those sights that you observer for a second, and then walk away to reduce imminent embarrassment. playing it is like exclaiming, "t-t-t-tourists over here!" but...how can you resist trying out those pipes? i must've been an organ-grinder's monkey in a past evolutionary cycle.
-made it to the owl n thistle, a darkened, lived-in yet tidy hovel of a bar currently in somewhat of a construction alley. if only i'd had the stomach room for a $4 happy hour burger, but i opted instead for a ninkasi ipa. at some point, ben sneezed so loud that every person in the bar turned around to bless him. i could dig the daytime vibe of this place, so dark and wooden that i forgot it was cloudy outside.
-not sure if it was the 4pm buzz, or the emerging sun, but leaving the owl, i felt like a flag unfurled. in hindsight, this was good; the day was just beginning. we headed back to pike place market to fruit up. while tyler investigated some art prints, ben & i kicked it in the park again, people-watching & chewing the fat. after snagging some peaches (again; too good to resist), we headed for the bus stop.
-stopped to procure cabin necessities: cigars. tyler chose well with some stinky rejects for $4 a pop---cheapest in the humidor. though ben was supposed to purchase wigs to impersonate andy's ex-es, and despite pausing to plan our next move, and finding ourselves directly in-front of a wig shop, we went wigless, as he cowed under the pressure of finding an empty shop with 1,000 empty-eyed heads staring at him. alas!
-took the bus back to randy's, and waited in the orange-glistening 5pm sunlight on the benches outside the apartment complex, watching the fountain burble and briefly petting a dog named...stinkbone? randy arrived, and we chilled out for awhile before heading back out...the night-of-dudes was ever-approaching.
-headed out towards fremont with good intentions. snagged gyros and falafel at a walk-up called sinbad's---though the best feature of the place were the wasted foursome who got in a good amount of groping, as well as walking to the counter, waving a hand full of bills, only to be told repeatedly that they'd already gotten & paid for their food. it was almost more embarrassing than funny, due to it being 9pm and not even dark yet. who knew that we'd catch up...

d.b. cooper...i think his drink had egg in it, which was the deal-breaker. i'll eat an over-easy egg, or fresh mayo, but something about stirring a white or yolk into liquid and not scrambling it turns the corners of my stomach.
-a quick jaunt across the street brought us to 9 million in unmarked bills, local whiskey-bar/small-plates restaurant. unfortunately, that's not a d.b. cooper reference (dude only asked for $200K, which would've made an equally good name)...and thus i passed on the non-themed-man's drink for an old fashioned with maker's mark. what can i say? i felt the midwest calling. the other dudes also ordered drinks full of muddled fruits, cinnamon sticks, and various zests that required the bartender to wield a metal tool that peeled an orange as easy as butter. may have to invest in one of these. hung out around a barrel to toast the future arrival of the rest of the party, then moved over to watch tyler kick an inordinate amount of ass on the free ms. pac-man game, which sat lonely in the bottleneck between bar & dining area, ignored by the masses of better-dressed-than-i yuppies and college-crowd. not that i'm judging...but eating ghosts is a old-fashioned pleasure that never ceases to satisfy, and i'm not too cool to watch it being done right.
-headed up the street to randy-described dive bar, the dubliner. hailing from indiana, when i hear the word "dive" i think of bars layered with the plastic nascar flags, the glow of a tube television barely piercing through an ashy blanket of stolid cigarette smoke, and the taste of a corn or rice-powered lager cold-coating my throat. in case i hadn't delineated, the pac-nw is different. this dive was clear-aired (still jealous of every-city-except-indianapolis), dim-but-clean, full of empty tables, tattoos, and flat-screens with soccer. oh, and unlike midwest dives, they sported at least 10 taps. we split a pitcher or two before randy headed for the airport, at which point we decided to have another beer, then head back for the apartment via bus. when i went to buy the round of 3 skulls wit, the bartendress informed me that a pitcher was just as cheap...and here-in lies the beginning of the end. we polished off the pitcher, and, now full of pomp and feeling great about friends, dudes, the dubliner, and the world in general (even current affairs couldn't harsh this mellow); we made a bee-line towards the bus-stop, with plans to stop off somewhere along the route for a nightcap.

View Larger Map
during a brief wait at said bus-stop, ben scaled the wall to relieve himself out-of-sight. tyler then followed suit, only to suffer what would be referenced as "vine-burns" for the rest of the weekend.
-after a rousing bus-ride with only a couple other passengers, we disembarked close to 85th street, with ideas of returning to the great tap-list at naked city. we figured randy and the crew wouldn't be at the apartment before 1am, so we could have a nightcap, then catch the final northwards bus. alas, it was just before midnight, and naked city was closing. across the street, the glowing sign of Baranof beckoned us, despite its apparently dim interior. passing through a closed dining room, we made it into the red-and-black hued, vinyl-booth-coated, besparkled bar of Baranof. the bar was empty; the 3 of us filled half of it, and immediately produced out-of-state ID's before settling into another IPA. here the fog sets in, not of war, but drunk, musky brotherhood; the music waxing to fill available earspace while the universe narrows to a bright, pinprick tunnel that is warm and smells of familiar comforts, booze, aftershave.
-eventually, and there is photo evidence of this fact, the rest of the jet-lagged dudes arrived with randy to the bar. things were now truly rolling. hugs were exchanged as we doubled the population of the bar just before closing hour. perhaps pints were ordered, but soon enough, last call came, and moments later tyler was handing out the obligatory whiskey shots. if toasts were uttered, i remember them not, but perhaps they were not in vain, and someone can later correct my version which has become somewhat of a rosetta stone, a joyfully-jagged edged memory. i do remember (or, perhaps, hope i remember) thinking, "oh wow...we are all alive in this one place...this is most fantastic."

photo by honorable a.s. maxson. while not the best picture of the night, clearly the most representative of the blur that was the evening.
-randy left to drive the other dudes back to the apartment, while tyler, ben, and i strode northwards on the sidewalks, with a promised return ride once the first carload was emptied. at some point, a small man in a zip-up sweater emerged from a sidestreet. facts were exchanged; of those that i remember, his name was Esteban, and he was Brazilian and spoke with an accent. i stammered out a vague invitation/talked up our mountain cabin, in parts unknown and towards Canada. most peculiar though, was his clear preference of Ben, who later kissed the top of the small man's head, after which Esteban remarked about his soft lips. while they walked ahead arm-in-arm, tyler & i trailed perhaps 10 feet back, supporting each other while weeping with laughter at the strange two-some in-front of us. at some point, he melted off again onto yet another side-street, leaving us in gales of laughter when randy pulled up to expedite us back to the apartment.
-ever seen 8 dudes bed down in a 2-bdrm. apartment? we tried, and failed, to order late night pizza, i managed to spill most of randy's DVD rack, and eventually made it to my sleeping mat. yes.

west, vol. 4 (a brief interlude)

2011-08-29T16:41:00.002-04:00

Before resuming my PAC-NW documentation, I offer up this brief review of storied Seattle delicatessen, Salumi, mentioned in a previous post. Read on:

Despite maintaining the least amount of open hours I've ever seen (ain't knocking it; I'd do it too, if I could); my buddy and I managed to hoof it down to their modest space on one of the most beautiful days imaginable. As a fruit vendor would later say to me, "DUDE, Santa Claus was wrong...THIS is the season to be jolly." Right on, man.

Anyhow, Salumi. A modest line extended out the door. The wait was roughly 30 minutes, which ain't that bad, and having withstood the rigors of Hot Doug's absurd line in Chicago made this seem like we were getting express service. The menu was brief & affordable. I believe it was the turn-of-phrase "slow-roasted explosion of flavor" that sold me on the porchetta. Right before ordering, a free sample of their mole salami nearly changed my mind, with its slow, smoky heat meting out increasing amounts of pleasure during the chew. But no! My brain froze when ordering, and all I could utter was, "Porchetta, please." Knowing I was going to be eating on the sidewalk, a can of Coke seemed an apropos addition.

Sat down in the funky triangle across the street that held a small bus hub, and was populated by a smattering of bus-folk, people loving on some sandwiches with their face, and plenty of pigeons. We sat, unwrapped, and immediately were overcome with a feeling of zen---this sandwich was clearly the only thing in the world that mattered. The universe had been reduced to my olfactory system, teeth, and a juicy beast of a sandwich that warmly throbbed with the vibrations of a thousand harps through two planks of well-hewn bread. Mmm. Oh yes...it was that good.

After finishing, we nodded at each other in silence, paid our respect to the deli paper that kept the sidewalk juice-less, and set out northwards, boldly facing a new, changed world. Only, changed for the better.

west, vol. 3

2011-08-22T11:52:00.010-04:00

sunday
woke up in a rough way after the previous bar crawl. walked down to diamond jim's grill (what a great name) for fried potatoes, sausage, eggs, and a ridiculous amount of coffee. homeward brought some reading time, and when ad & megan headed out to a social event, i biked downtown. first went to the local everyday music, a northwest chain with a more-than-fair used & new selection. i picked up: kluster's admira 1971 reissue, michael rother's esperanza, yo la tengo's summer sun, hans-joachim roedelius's works 1968-2005 compilation, and group bombino's guitars from agadez, vol. 2, a great sublime frequencies release. all used!
-then popped down to the community food co-op, and picked up flour, eggs, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella, to make pizza and blackberry-cornmeal-buttermilk muffins. was barely able to stuff it all in my satchel, but made it home on the bike without breaking a single egg. whipped up the fantastic cupcake/muffins, and then hung out whilst eating the purple heirloom tomatoes, and toast with goat cheese.

monday
-woke up, had another nice 4mile run, barely even breaking a sweat till i was done. wow...could get used to that.
-biked uphill towards & under the interstate, aiming for a ridge that overlooks the town, as well as the bay. roughly started at the upper-left blue point, towards the blue point at the lower-right.

View Bellingham Overlook in a larger map
-rode through whatcom falls park, up some bike trails that ended abruptly, and up a few hills i didn't think i'd be able to do. had to walk the last mile or so in from the trailhead. the view from the ridge was pretty spectacular, the weather equally so. munched on some tomato-basil bread with the goat cheese we'd snagged from the market, and some blueberries. the route back was much quicker...downhill most of the way.
-after cleaning up, went to the northwest washington fair, which was ... fair. couldn't hold up to the indiana state fair. ate some fried vegetables and bbq beef. found out what "horse pole bending" was...a crazy event where you sprint your horse slalom-style around rubber poles.

tuesday
-woke up, had some breakfast. decided to hit seattle that day. left around noon, with sandwich aims, and a hobo supply list: sleeping mat, grocery bag full of possessions, and my army map bag. true northwest itinerant style.
-located randy's workplace without smartphone or map, and picked up the keys to his apartment.
-ate a fantastic sandwich on the sidewalk at paseo's, where i left a puddle of the finest juices for some lucky hound. the pork shoulder with cilantro, mayo, jalapenos, romaine, and grilled onions on a crusty, oblong loaf was a beautiful thing.
-bro dropped me off at homebase seattle for the next few days, and bro-time commenced when tyler arrived shortly thereafter, fresh from roaming the city. we awaited randy's presence; who then left us to our own bro-devices to go on a date.
-made our way via bus to naked city brewhouse. had one of their house brews, a dubbel, a foggy noggin big chief (irish red), and a firestone walker solace wheat. though the dubbel was tasty (wished i had had a chance for another one of their in-house taps), the foggy noggin was the highlight. and a rather tasty steak salad (yeah, i don't know why i went for that, but it hit the spot). watched soccer highlights and began to chew the fat with ty, anticipating the ever-growing bro-gathering that was commencing...right then. randy picked us up on the way back to his place, and i fell asleep in the terrible glow of the new predator movie. c'mon adrien brody.

wednesday
-woke up pretty early. ty & i had one goal for this day (besides ruling, and meeting up with ben later on): salumi. rode the 5 downtown to 3rd & Pike, and hoofed it south, past frou-frou art galleries and several missions. made it to salumi, whose line was only extending 25 or so people out the door. it was beautiful out...why not wait?
-once we got inside, we were treated to a sample of their mole salami, which was pretty incredible. despite that, i had to go for a hot sandwich, the "slow-roasted flavor explosion" of the porchetta. whoa. just when i thought i'd had the tastiest sandwich in history, i'm treated to something almost on a different level. it was zen, like i said to tyler, "when i'm eating this sandwich...nothing else [redacted] matters man...there is only the sandwich." also ate this on the sidewalk across the street, with a can of coke (seemed apropos) and street pigeons flapping in my general direction.
-despite the sandwich buzz, we pressed onwards, greased mouths toward the sun. tyler hadn't been through seattle's central library, so we headed that way, walking the hills, and exploring one of the few buildings that is able to give me indoor vertigo. or maybe it was the porchetta settling. the red floor 4 is particularly affecting; so intense as you exit up the metal stairs to a wall of light and space.
-turned east and walked to capitol hill in search of sonic boom records. unfortunately, the store was closing in 2 weeks, and we didn't expect much. however, the used CDs were 50% off, and we found quite a bundle that weren't picked through yet. tyler snagged 15 or so at about 2.50 a pop, and i came home with three: stereolab's switched on, vol. 2 and margerine eclipse and the remaster/re-issue of the soundtrack to black orpheus. there were also 4 copies of everything, now!'s spatially severed, at a dollar a pop, likely leftover from an indie listening station promotion we were part of. alas. i recall seeing our records in out-of-state stores for the first time and being so excited---so i am at least happy to report that i still felt a spark of pride, even if they were now priced below cost.
-headed back to pike's place market for a mega-round of people-watching and fruit-obtaining. tyler picked up some utterly choice rainier cherries, and i sprung for some peaches. fruitstand guy greeted me with the quote of the week (one of, at least), "DUDE, how's your day been?" i was immediately part of his vibe-flow and replied, "DUDE...it's been awesome. i mean, this weather, am i right?" him: "yeah, man, totally. santa claus was wrong...this is the season to be jolly." he then sold me some amazing peaches that were bigger than my fist. we walked down to the park at the northern end of the market, which was filled with tourists, do-nothings, itinerants, LARPers (for real), businessmen, tribal folk, guitar strummers, vendors, and sleeping junkies. chilled in the sun for awhile, staring at the bay and mt. rainier, on the most unbelievably clear and sunny day yet. in between mountain gazing, we were reading off funny/bad band names from the local alt weekly. highlights included "crazy and the brains" and "poop attack!"
-bounced up to the bus stop and rode back to randy's. slept halfway. got back in time for to hang out for a couple hours before ben's arrival, striding up with his suitcase in hand. we immediately got in the car and drove to the U-district, walking around the neighborhood before swinging in to a pizza joint with $2 drafts. what!? despite looking like a funky sbarro, it was surprisingly delicious. caught up with ben, and the bro-power was increasing. swung by an albertson's to pick up some deschutes, and a watermelon wheat, and went back to randy's, where relaxing occurred before falling asleep watching the first episode of game of thrones.

west, vol. 2

2011-08-15T02:47:00.004-04:00

Friday
-began with a morning run. no sweat! wow! 4 miles. neighborhood loop.
-cleaned up, set off on bikes. rode to fairhaven, stopped for fairhaven fish and chips. wild fried salmon, homemade tartar. mmm. i'm not sure where this love affair with mayo began...but i'm on that train, for sure.
-back on bikes to get as close to larrabee park as possible. made it till the trail got rough, sat in the woods for a spell, gazing at the tall trees and stream.
-stopped at fairhaven park, overlooking splash walk & large hill w/ frisbee throwers. 75 degrees!
-rode back to boulevard park, sat in sun reading till i was sleepy, then laid in the sun and fell asleep. nose got sunburned...thought i was almost in canada!
-saw a guy "walking" 2 fat goats down the bike/walk path. not on leashes...they stood & watched us pick wild blackberries till he was 50 ft past and continually yelling for them. the larger one was named Neptune. had a stare-down with him robert goulet style. they finally trotted after him, their wide bellies swinging.
-got back, drank some white wine in the backyard lawn chairs in the sun. ad cooked up some very tasty zucchini fritters, with a simple tomato/cuke/onion greek salad. gin martinis, shaken not stirred, watched zack galifinakis stand up. sleep early after so much exercise.

Saturday
-up early, went to farmer's market close to noon. lots of hub-bub, vendors, musicians, great looking produce. ethiopian food! snagged lion's mane mushrooms, heirloom purple tomatoes, red peppers for stuffing, deep red plums, fresh goat chevre cheese. megan stayed back making wheat basil bread.
-bought hempler's sausage with kraut & grilled onions, sat and watched two marimba players & a trumpeter play some cyclical, call-and-response afro-beat stuff. hypnotizing. small child banged a cowbell that skittered after the beat perfectly.
-walked across the street for a pint at boundary bay & to watch the sounders game. had a sorachi ipa. tasty! sounders remained tied, rode back to the house.
-drove out to lake whatcom, hiked alongside 4 or so miles in along sheer cliffs and fresh water. couldn't take the water...peed on the side of the trail, looking both ways all paranoid.
-people own little strips of land next to the lake, where they come & barbecue and boat, or have a camper, & a shed, garden, etc. weird!
-happy hour at the fork. ninkasi maiden shade ipa, pork belly sliders, flatbread pizza with parm, green apple, homemade sausage, caramelized onion, and curried almonds (with honey or perhaps sugar glazed). reeeeeal good. arugula salad with balsamic, parm, cherries, plum. mmmmm. i was feeling a bit underdressed in a place with linen napkins, sitting at the bar next to a woman working (?) on a tablet pc. or maybe she was reading romance e-books. either way.
-home, clean up, try not to fall asleep. walked downtown, went to the grand (dive-y bar). had deschutes mirror pond ipa. went to copper hog for the firestone velvet merkin stout. twas smooth as one would expect a velvet merkin to be. !!!
-went to the beaver inn for fried sampler platter: dill pickles, onion rings, green beans, zucchini, mushrooms, mac n cheese bites, mozz stix, jalapeno poppers. whoa! who needs a state fair when a 10-spot will get you all that. with nary a drop of grease to be found. manny's pale & lucille ipa. desk chairs. free popcorn. terrible jukebox (candlebox, bobby brown). rough bathroom...trough-style reminiscent of the chug! kitchen closed before more green beans were had...
-russian dumpling joint, Pel' Meni: meat dumplings, potato dumplings. served with sour cream cup and brown bread. world's ideal beer sponge? mmmmmm. a little spicy. then walking home, lots of cops out and about, but we didn't raise a ruckus. didn't think i was drunk till i laid down. whoops!

west, vol. 1

2011-08-13T11:45:00.004-04:00

Wednesday
I flew out late Wednesday for my third trip out to the Pacific Northwest (although one of these was just passing through, on tour with EN!). After flights that rendered me as stiff as when I completed the half-marathon, my brother plucked me from the Seattle airport at close to midnight local time, in the midst of a three-lane rat-race that made the Indianapolis pick-up zone look like a machine. On the ride back to Bellingham...my desperately-empty stomach needed something warm. (I'd only managed to find a lemon-blueberry scone via Caribou Coffee in Minneapolis), and reluctantly turned to the McChicken. Glazed in mayo, of course, with hot-n-salty fries. I'm not sure when the last time I ate McDonald's, but I wasn't disappointed...except in myself. Desperate times call for pre-shaped particle-pressed chicken patties. Got back to the house past 2am, and immediately went to bed in the wooden loft of the guest room.

Thursday
My body and brain were so confused, I failed to sleep in. Woke up around 8, showered, started reading one of my vacation books (all food/culture this time): Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner. After showering and considering cooking in, we took advantage of the sun & newfound warmth to walk downtown to a Belgian-styled breakfast joint, the Mount Bakery. Having never consumed Eggs Benedict before, this seemed like a ripe (and recommended opportunity) for which i was richly rewarded with two poached eggs laying seductively atop half a belgian waffle topped in thin-sliced ham, all on a bed of roasted potatoes. This was, naturally, blanketed with a golden blanket of Hollandaise. Combined with great coffee and a sunny patio...this blew my jet-lagged mind.

Post-food coma, Ad and I headed out on bikes to gather in more of the sun, riding streets and paths down to Boulevard Park, which is on the bay and was crowded with sun-seekers. Rode a little farther to Marine Park, off the beaten path and much smaller and quieter, with some nice stones to sit and look out at sailboats, the port, even Lummi Island. He had an outdoor soccer game to play in the early evening, so we booked back through town, and I worked on some LP art (the 2-color center of the record) for this fall's EN! release.

Early draft for Do It On the Moon record centers.

He returned in time to respond to gnawing hunger pangs from Megan and I, and then they treated me with a gift certificate he'd been hoarding (or...hadn't had time to use while jetsetting across the midwest and east coast) to a local "gastropub" (something about that word just rubs me the wrong way...I blame Indiana), the Copper Hog. I needed little encouragement to try one of the best burgers I've ever had, excessively topped with fried egg, bacon, and cheese, of course. The featured brewery that night was Seattle's Two Beers Brewery, which provided a smooth & tasty blonde, and an IPA that was distinctly hoppy, but not overly so. Both I thought were more than adequate representations of each style. By this point, it was close to midnight, and my sleep-addled brain had been feeling like mush since 8pm, so I was out immediately upon returning.

carmel half-marathon: luxe & reduxe pt. 2

2011-07-09T11:00:00.000-04:00

(read part one here.)

A couple months before the race, my long runs were going pretty well. I was increasing them by a mile every other week, with the goal of running 13 a couple weeks prior to the race. I was staying close enough to my 8-minute-mile pace that the goal felt reachable. Unfortunately, about 4 weeks prior to the race I came down with some body aches that finally morphed into a nasty flu, which then wreaked havoc on my digestive system. I went out of commission for about 10 days, completely throwing my running schedule out-of-whack. I did manage to get in a 9-miler (in 80-plus-degree heat and 90% humidity) the Sunday prior to the race. Still, I felt like my goal was going to be tough to hit, especially with the heat wave Indiana had been roiling in during late May and early June. I managed to stay in on a Friday night, and cooked a bunch of pasta with some sauteed oyster mushrooms and home-made basil pesto. Throw in some extra bread, and a big salad with strawberries soaked in balsamic vinegar and pepper...that was dinner.

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Rough route of the half-marathon. Running on the trails was a great idea...definitely the best part of the race.

The day of the race, the weather had cooled somewhat, and remained overcast (save for the last mile or two). Humidity was still high, but the temperature felt good to me (was probably close to 70). I think I was up at 4:30, warmed up some steel-cut oats that I had let soak overnight (I usually prefer cooking them fresh, but had to save a few minutes of sleep somewhere) with raisins, and cracked a hard-boiled egg as well. All that was missing from childhood camping experiences were the little salt & pepper packets that we'd hoard from various restaurant condiment counters. Drank the advised 20 oz. of water (I'd drank like a fiend the previous day as well), and finally made it out the door near 5:50 with Amelia, who was (un)happily going to pull an 8-hour shift after the race.

Got one of the last parking spots in the lot, pinned my number to my chest (wearing one of Dad's old Maconaquah track jerseys, from ~1974, with red & white vertical stripes topped with a teal letter "M" with wings), and walked to the start/finish line. The adrenaline was pumping a bit, dampened perhaps by the intermittent sprinkles from the gray sky. Oh man, now I had to pee. Real bad. There were lots of port-a-pots, but serious lines, so I waited for ~15 minutes (until they issued a loudspeaker warning to get to the starting area) to relieve myself, left the rest of my gear & a smooch with Amelia, and found the back-side of the 8:00-mile pace group. It was packed in pretty tight, though when the race started (after blasting a claustrophobic group of adults with "The Final Countdown") things spaced out almost immediately (to strains of Janelle Monae's "Tightrope", a perfect 2011 starting song).

I spent the first mile-plus being boxed in by a couple slower runners, maneuvering and accelerating around the catch up to the 8:00 pace runner (this was awesome, by the way, as I didn't have to think about how fast I was running the early miles). Since I always run by myself, it was actually pretty cool running with a big group of people (supposedly close to 5,000 registered for the 3 races combined). The runners began to string out pretty early, and I bypassed the first two early water stands, preferring to stay in the groove right with the 8-minute pack. A tall, older gentlemen asked me if I was wearing a North Central jersey, so I educated him on Maconaquah. He was running something like 9 marathons this summer, and soon zoomed past the group of 30 or so people I was running with.

Just past mile 4, the half-marathon split off from the marathon, while on a two-lane road just outside of town. I hit the turn-around, and proceeded to go back up the hill we'd just spent half a mile running down. I wasn't feeling awesome at this point, but managed to avoid getting a side ache on the hill, and at the crest, I caught up with a couple who were talking about their 8-minute pace (if my crappy $5 Target watch does splits, I can't/won't ever figure it out), so I proceeded to shadow them for the next few miles that wound through some (anti)scenic suburbs, albeit, with streets less pockmarked than my neighborhood. There were a fair amount of people and families in their driveways, which was pretty cool.

Feeling strong here...even if I had the crazy eye going on. May have been suffering from suburb-psychosis.

Passing through the suburbs, the field was pretty stretched out. I passed the couple I was drafting behind at a water stop (I just grabbed a cup and took a few sips at each, maybe tossing it on my head once), and after that it was fairly sparse. The course then exited onto a street, where I passed a few people on a hill before we began the trail section. This was the coolest part of the race by far, winding through some woods, over bridges, and in general cooler temperature-wise than being on the exposed asphalt. I was feeling extremely fast through this section, passing some runners, hugging all corners. Around mile 10, I had the thought that I might even approach the 1:40:00 mark, thinking I could run the last 3 miles in sub-7:00 time. Clearly, my brain was lactic-acid-addled.

David Rudisha of Kenya breaks the 13-year old 800m world record last year. Obviously lactic acid ain't bothering him a bit. I would describe my mood at mile 9 as "Rudisha-like."

Around mile 11.5, I knew what the oft-named "wall" was all about. The course had exited back on to the streets, and the sun was beginning to glow through the cloud cover. Add to that an obese woman in an SUV somehow exited (driving the wrong way down the lane) onto the course, and was doing a 40-point turn in the one-lane road...jackass. I hoofed it in the median for a few yards, then back onto the course, sucking down some exhaust and silently cursing. Right after this, it felt like all the muscles in my body congealed into one gelatinous, aching mass. "Oh, okay...this is the wall," I thought.

Simultaneously, the sun came out, the straightaways seemed to extend past the horizon, and to top things off, right before the finish there was a long, slow, excruciatingly boring Indiana hill. Powered through, somehow, and passed maybe close to ten people on the hill, rounded the final corner, saw Amelia & my Mom out of the corner of my eye, tried & failed to give a full smile, didn't collapse, and crossed the finish line.

Final results...118th overall out of 1000+. Most proud of my last 5K being a minute faster than my first, despite hitting the wall somewhere in the middle of those last few miles. Oh, and luckily I beat the 14-yr.-old right behind me. Phew.

Post-race, I consumed some Fritos, water, a pretzel and mustard at the Farmer's Market, then made it home just in time to lay around on the couch with a stomachache for most of the day, watching track-and-field and reading on-and-off. Hoping my next half-marathon will be the Monumental Half-Marathon in November, and I've been keeping a steady 5-days-a-week running pattern since the race, to which I'm hoping to add some light weights this fall.

carmel half-marathon: luxe & reduxe pt. 1

2011-06-27T11:20:00.003-04:00

This past Saturday, June 11th, I ran my first half-marathon, my first competitive race since running a near-anonymous and painfully-slow 800 meters at some year-end 7th grade track meet. From then on, I played soccer year round through high school, and though my Dad coached high school track for thirty-plus years, it bored me to even entertain the thought of running without chasing a ball. Even 4 months ago, I would've said the same thing. No longer!

Dad on-track right before retiring from the coaching game. Fitting that hurdles are in the shot, as that was his event in high school. The last time I ran them, in seventh grade, I bit it hard on the cinder track at Bon Air Middle School. It may have even been while warming up, although if it was the race, I must've finished. That night under the tub faucet, I dug the leftover charcoal bits out of my new-scabbed knee with a screwdriver.
Fast-forward through 8 years of non-exercise, undergraduate degree-working, cheap (and then craft) beer-loving, live rock-and-roll playing & touring, off-the-grid living; I eventually ended up in Indianapolis with a full-time job, making enough money so that I no longer had to live on Oriental-flavored ramen, bananas, and pasta (my one-year Bloomington diet). Fairly sedentary, I was cooking and eating pretty well, depending on my always-active metabolism to keep me DeBoy-thin. I gained some pounds, had a nice little belly going on at, yes, 160+ pounds. Doesn't sound like much, but I never even approached 150 in high school, despite eating 5 times a day.

In the Fall of 2009, a friend from high school contacted me about playing indoor soccer at the nice facility at Carmel's Off the Wall Sports. I agreed, and immediately thought that if I was going to pay to play (not to mention drive all the way to, blech, Carmel), then I better at least try to get back into some sort of shape. My first run was twice around a pathetically small neighborhood loop:

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Roughly .6 of a mile, two laps left me breathless, sore, sucking wind and holding my arms up and behind my head (I must not be the only person who finds this posture relaxing...). Wow, I was way more out-of-shape than I thought. With my history of soccer and still slim frame, I falsely assumed I was in fair shape, or at least more fair than most Americans. Wrong.

The first game was brutal, sprinting back and forth on Astroturf, the thick taste of sweating in cold weather in my mouth. Lactic acid build-up hit me immediately, and an offensive run, even down the small field, reduced me to a gasping, ineffective defender. Ok...so I wasn't in shape at all. I ran a few times a week through the fall, then halted for winter, not ready to test the icy streets of the near-east side.

Asics GEL-DS Trainer 16. I thought running shoes were a farce, but as it turns out, my Dad's words were gospel truth. "Pay now, or pay later." Been running relatively pain-free since switching to these.
Amelia bought me really nice running shoes (my first pair) for my birthday in January of 2010, though it was really not till March till I started running again. I built up to a roughly 3-mile loop, running mostly mornings, especially once the heat of summer hit. I tried to run 3 days a week, plus the weekly soccer game, and began to feel better durning those as the summer progressed. In early fall, battling morning stomach-aches, my doctor advised me to run evenings instead, so I made the switch. After a vacation out West, I stopped soccer entirely, and began to focus on running. Using a wall calendar, I believe I ran about 150 days in 2010, with a goal of achieving at least 180 in 2011.

In December, I finally made the leap to join a local gym, though not just any. NIFS, or the National Institute for Fitness and Sport, features an indoor running track, among other amenities. This allowed me to begin timing my runs, and knowing pretty exact distances I was completing. For shorter runs, I began aiming for a 7-minute-mile pace (for 4 to 5 miles; still not quite there, as my fastest timed 4-miler is 28:05), while on longer runs (8+ miles), I tried to keep to a 8-minute-mile pace. At this point, I was running 4 or 5 times a week, with some bike-work or sprinting following most sessions. The NIFS indoor track has a little rubberized bounce to it, and is more forgiving than pavement, not to mention not having to look out for stray dogs, speeding minivans, and new-sprouted potholes.

At some point, I mentally decided I should run a half-marathon. Unfortunately, when the sign-up for the Indy Mini, I was dealing with a knee tweak, and didn't sign up since I wasn't sure how long it would be till I was at full-strength again. The Mini sold out quickly, and buying someone else's pass seemed an option for a minute, till I realized I didn't want to pay the transfer fee. So I settled on the Carmel Half-Marathon, the inaugural running of the race, found on a flier at NIFS. Yeah, I slag on Carmel and anyone else who lives in "Indy" but resides outside the 465 loop (suburbanites!); but I allowed myself to feel like I could run in their race. At least the streets would be better, I thought, with the kind of tax base that could pay for this. Plus, I run by myself, so a smaller crowd than the Mini's ~35,000 seemed more my speed. So I signed up...

Yeah...I did not wanna be in the middle of this, sandwiched between Carmelites with their sport beans and hairy dudes with iPods blaring their shitty, uptempo 92.3 playlist... That said, I'll probably run it next year.
Part two (the race!) to follow.

dream map: may 2011 mix

2011-06-14T12:08:00.001-04:00

Click here to download.
1. The Mighty Two - War is Over (recorded between 1974-1979; from 2002's No Bones for the Dogs)
2. Olufemi Ajasa & His Nigerian Bros - Aiye Le (from 2008's Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump
3. Funkadelic - If You Don't Like the Effects, Don't Produce the Cause (from 1972's America Eats Its Young)
4. Radio Algeria - Disco Maghreb (from 2006's Radio Algeria)
5. Bardo Pond - lb. (from 2001's Dilate)
6. Spiritualized - Electricity (Live) (from 1998's Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997)
7. Sonic Youth - Reena (from 2006's Rather Ripped)
8. Phew - Dream (from 1981's Phew)
9. The Rolling Stones - That's How Strong My Love Is (from 1965's Out of Our Heads)
10. TV on the Radio - Stork and Owl (from 2008's Dear Science)

May was a particularly heavy listening month, and with the sweltering late-Summer like weather, I had to lead this mix off with some crucial dub reggae snagged from the always-quality Holy Warbles. I think I've mentioned before how reggae finally clicked with me while living in Bloomington in 2007, and "War is Over" with its reedy, emotive organ line is full of hooks, the excellent, smooth vocal that enters late, the simple syncopation of the bass-line; this may be the most memorable dub number I've ever heard.

"Aiye Le" takes that good energy and multiplies it, leading off with a melody on electric guitar joined in short order by rollicking hand percussion, and joyful call-and-response & group vocals. There's a great, almost surf-esque high-frequency guitar solo not even 90 seconds in. When the second solo rides in, you'll want to yelp along with the background vocalist.

It's undoubtable that Funkadelic produced some of the best rock-tinged RnB funk-jams of all time; "If You Don't Like the Effects, Don't Produce the Effects" is one of these, strutting along with slow-jam, sweltering sermon-like pacing. Aww shit, if you can't move to this, you just can't move. The strings here boost it to another level, almost as regal as the sassy group vocals throughout the second verse. Never has rhetorical reasoning sounded so damn sexy.

Radio Algeria is another of the great compilations from world-sound travellers Sublime Frequencies. this is the lead-track, which starts off on-fire, drum machines blazing, with some sort of tinny, eastern-sounding horn flying in on top of the mix. A quick vocal segues into a stringed-instrument solo which itself gives way to pleading vocals over some phased-out guitar which organically becomes a percussive jam...and so it goes. Being all over the place all the time is the mantra here, and it works even during sudden shifts, giving you the perspective of a dusty dial-twister marooned at a desk, on a rooftop, in a sweltering vehicle...

I want to bring back the 8x10 glossies...tired of this EPK nonsense. Black and white prints are so much classier.

Shifting gears is not normally a quality associated with Bardo Pond, their dense soundscapes usually encircling a towering riff, and piling onto it with the full, humid thrust of their attack. Here, "lb." lumbers through such a riff, vocalist Isobel Sollenberger letting the fuzz wash over her slow-paced vocals. "You make me feel like nothing." Ah, but here's a change! Three-plus minutes in, an over-filtered guitar squelch introduces a riff at double-speed, and the band enters re-energized while Sollenberger drags behind the speedboat of a riff, a smoky-voiced wake that works surprisingly well.

The new-found sense of speed carries over into "Electricity", which does not flow at the often glacial-pace of Spiritualized tunes, instead channeling a full-plumed V.U., complete with horn skronk and overdriven organ. It's a smash-and-bash affair, made even more effective by the vocal verse halfway through over just-quickening drums before the wild riff explodes back into the song. This is Spiritualized at the peak of their live powers, a release essential in any collection that will leave you in squall & thrall just like the end of this track.

Me with the wait of the entire Hall in the palm of my hand. Should've tried to look inside. This day felt particularly revelatory, something about standing in a spot so famous yet distant from my own life---and then being there in person.

Rather Ripped is one of my favorite records of the last five years, and though it may be ridiculed, my favorite SY record. How'd that happen? This record is one untouchable riff after another, very few effects or noise getting in the way. "But that's not the point of a Sonic Youth record!" Well...yeah, but these aren't normal riffs, they're still skewed, solo'd over, layered, de-tuned. "Reena" begins with a Daydream Nation-esque riff, which takes a while to unfurl itself, like a flag stretching out in a brisk wind. They barrel through it, roll through a feverish bridge, and end by driving it into the ground in a high-frequency jam.

Phew's "Dream" is my one nod to kraut on this mix...a Japanese vocalist backed by Can's rhythm section, produced by Conny Plank. The record itself is a melange of no-wave, alternately dance-y and haunting. "Dream" is a piano ballad, melancholy for sure, backed by interference from Plank's studio wizardry, electronics weaving in-and-out lending texture to the occasionally delayed-out chords. Some guitar-notes slide in, an eerie coda to a beautiful song. No translation needed.

Understated cover for Phew's self-titled record. Lost classic?

Otis Redding may have done it (not-quite) first, but the Stones' take on "That's How Strong My Love Is" is without fault. Jagger here is the star, pleading in the half-yowl, half-talk style he was busily perfecting on 1965's Out of Our Heads. The band ramps up momentarily, dropping down to a whisper before roaring back, letting Mick howl over the top, while they carry things into the red, a scorching ballad.

I often forget about Dear Science which replaced manic energy of TV on the Radio's most successful singles with a sound largely built on restraint. Looking & listening back, it's still an extremely strong record. Upon release of their newest effort Nine Types of Light, I feel like "Stork and Owl" is a great indicator of their direction, a song built on tons of little touches. At the beginning, the glitch-heavy slam of a beat, and vocal loops of "ahhhhs" and "ohhhhs" build tension that mounts with the inclusion of plucking strings. The chorus, with it's almost-falsetto lead vox, is a release, less glitch and more strings, and floats into the next verse with a string melody and cluster of delayed-out synth notes. They do this slow-build so well...I can forgive them for not writing another "Wolf Like Me." This is studied pop, emotionally heavy, and exceptionally beautiful at the end, vocals harmonizing with swelling strings, the beat finally tumbled off the cliff leaving just the void and those plaintive vocal loops.

"why do people believe in space & time...cause i'm leavin' all of that behind..."

2011-05-19T18:35:00.002-04:00

Last Thursday, Amelia & I had the good fortune of travelling to Columbus, OH to see Werner Herzog's new 3-D movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

The movie centers around Chauvet Cave which houses the oldest (and incredibly well-preserved) cave paintings in the known world. It is closed to the public for preservation--thus, this may be the only video footage filmed.

The drawings themselves are incredible, and lent extra-realistic portrayal via the 3-D viewing, as many are painted on undulating cave walls that play into the movement and look of the drawings. This was my first 3-D movie (as long as you don't count amusement parks...like the ridiculous cyberpunk psychedelia of indoor rollercoaster CHAOS...Opryland's finest), and it took me a good 30 minutes to reach a point where I felt like my eyes weren't constantly swimming for adjustment.

Herzog's warmth and humanity are evident as ever in many of the interviews, in which he manages to mine character and compassion from a range of scientists, academics, and cave-seekers. Vibrant personality exists everywhere, and Herzog is adept as ever in exposing it; from a pathetic attempt at spear-throwing, to a scientist's circus past, to the bone-flute-stylings of an experimental archaeologist named...Wulf.

The strongest aspect of the whole movie though, is Herzog's use of the cave to rend the space-time fabric that separates us from our distant ancestors, a gulf that often seems infinite in its breadth. Even considering the vastness of time & space with the added bonus of an understandable context (art!) is intimidating. Without context, in my personal experience, thinking about such distant connections is an impossibility.

Wulf and Werner.
The connections to our past are strong, and emotional, throughout the movie. The wall of handprints in red; the sprayed outline of the same hand; with silence and blinding flashlights as a backdrop (add in the stunning score or reverberating heartbeats) these are stunningly heavy revelations. When Herzog mentions the footprint of a child and a wolf side-by-side, not knowing whether they came in together, or thousands of years apart, the point is hammered home. Time as we perceive it is swift; the usual metaphor being a river. But it comes across here as more of a glacier, inching forwards inevitably, leaving chasms that can be crossed mentally, but rarely physically. This cave, this movie, is one of those rare chances. Seize it.

floating somewhere above: april 2011 mix

2011-05-15T16:00:00.003-04:00

Click here to download.
1. Cluster - Hollywood (from 1974's Zuckerzeit)
2. Liliental - Wattwurm (from 1978's Liliental)
3. Ash Ra Tempel - Light Look at Your Sun (from 1972's Schwingungen)
4. Don Cherry - Mali Doussn'Gouni (from 1973's Relativity Suite)
5. The Feelies - Original Love (from 1980's Crazy Rhythms)
6. Songs: Ohia - Coxcomb Red (from 2000's The Lioness)
7. Jackie-O-Motherfucker - Bone Saw (from 2003's Wow!/The Magick Fire Music)
8. Times New Viking - Teen Drama (from 2008's Rip It Off)
9. Archers of Loaf - Fabricoh (from 1995's Vee Vee)
10. Jackie Bernard - Jah Jah Way (from 2005's V/A: Studio One Roots 2)

I spent April meandering out of yet another Kraut phase, evidenced here by the first three tracks. Cluster's "Hollywood" is a melodic take on their most accessible work, Zuckerzeit, which was really a combination of solo efforts on the part of Moebius and Roedelius. Unlike the abstract soundscapes of I and II, here melody and rhythm abound, proving that yes, machines can be fun! Liliental's "Wattwurm" is a watered-down version of this, on a record with a slightly island/world pastiche filtered through German jazz/prog-heads. This track crawls along in an oddly satisfying way, continually toeing the line of being too fey, never quite stepping across.

Contrary to what this picture implies, machines can sound fun! Also, cool little article about the passing of Max Matthews, arguably the origin of computer-based music composition.

Ash Ra Tempel's "Light Look at Your Sun" starts with a pastoral, plucked acoustic, whispering like a spring thaw---naturally, things get heavy, and out of the storm wails a lightning bolt of a solo. Yeah, it's your standard dynamic change recently appropriated by any band wishing to adhere to the worst-named subgenre ever (I'm talking about you, post-rock); but it comes across here as bluesy and static-filled, a sense of unease filling the wide swaths of nothingness that comprise the majority of the song. In the same way, Don Cherry's "Mali Doussn'Gouni" evolves from a simple shaker rhythm into rapidly chanted gibberish, musical in its atonality. Of course, leading directly out of that is a fantastically colored cornet solo--a collision of a blank-ethnic rhythm & vocal with equally borderless, piercing jazz.

The fantastically quilted Don Cherry album cover for Relativity Suite. If you have a spare $150 lying around, you're welcome to purchase this gem for me.

I'm not sure what hole I've been living in (oh, wait...that's right), but I hadn't heard The Feelies till April, when I happened upon some recent re-issues. Kinda like the Talking Heads on speed, guitars and drums buzzing around, with a vocalist who generally overpowers anything else going on (though not to David Byrne's extent). Don't be fooled by their Vampire Weekend-cover, which only proves that everything old is new again. "Original Love" is a thin slice of early-80s new-wave/punk that is about as chunky & poppy as they get on Crazy Rhythms. Not that I'm complaining... Solid as well is "Coxcomb Red," which devastates with its simplicity of chords, its insistent rhythm, and above all else, lyrics that hit like hammers. Jason Molina always has a penchant for emotionally invested anti-pop, but this spare arrangement of voice & acoustic may rise above all other of his fine examples. Just a stunning achievement of focus, this song has purpose.

Songs: Ohia - "Coxcomb Red"

"Bone Saw" is an arid neo-desert instrumental, slow-moving in a very deliberate way---indicative of the Jackie-O Motherfucker controlled improvisation mindset. This really reminds me of Neil Young's score for the Jim Jarmusch Western movie, Dead Man. It gets a little more fleshed out, adding meat to Neil's bones. Times New Viking's "Teen Drama" cuts through the heady jams like a knife, albeit a pitted, rusty, anthemic blade. I hesitated to even put anything from Rip It Off on this mix, since my relationship with this record is hate/love, with an emphasis on the former. The sheer volume, everything levelled so that it comes across as superheated & painful; is usually too much to bear. But that pop hook, that plaintive riff that lies at the center of "Teen Drama", it's too much to deny; as are the boy/girl harmonies that reside in the blown-out chorus. This is pop at its most painful, and it's a song I keep going back to.

The halcyon 90s...back before you had to cultivate an image in addition to your music. The Archers recently reunited for a tour, by the way.

Archers of Loaf's "Fabricoh" pulls back from the edges, just an dirty alt-rock standard with a one-note bridge. Eric Bachmann's next-best sing-along to all-time classic "Web in Front," the coda here will have you on the balls of your feet whether you mean to or not. The mix closes with "Jah Jah Way." Roots reggae always excels at its simplest, and this Jackie Bernard number is sublime genius, simple enough to sing, bouncy but not too fast, perfect for the creeping humidity levels of the Midwest. Simply a groove that cannot be denied.

music diary project, day four, five, & six

2011-04-26T14:24:00.002-04:00

Friday, April 8th
Another quiet day, despite receiving another Reckless mailorder during the week.

(3:30p) Flying Saucer Attack - New Lands
I seriously cannot get enough Flying Saucer Attack lately---to the point where I went and filled in their discography via mail-ordering used discs. Here, leader David Pearce's vision has never been so loud-yet-hushed. Massed clouds of distortion float just above the surface; a stunning achievement in avant-garde pop.

Make no mistake, this is pop. Mellow, acoustic slow jam cloaked in gritty disguise, thick coat of static.

(7:00p) First half of my March mix.
Heading to the beginning of a bro-down with former roommates/current compadres Andy & Tyler...I was driving Amelia's car across town on one of the nicest days of the year, I couldn't help but try out my tape-dubbed copy of this mix. I already wrote about it at the above link...so check it out there.

Saturday, April 9th
Woke up early on a friend's house, and drove through thick sheets of rain back home to look for a suit for a wedding with my younger brother. Later in the day, post-tacos, were rejoined by friends, spun some jams while finishing the last of my Yuengling haul (Black & Tan, of course) from the Florida Christmas roadtrip. In-between, viewed the cult-classic (and by cult, I mean an estimated 10 people around the globe) Norm MacDonald vehicle, Dirty Work.

Don Rickles, in the finest comedy cameo known to man. Did I mention bit roles for Chris Farley, Chevy Chase, John Goodman? A veritable smorgasbord.

(8:30a) Second half of my March mix.

(4:00p) Yo la Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
What else can I say about this record that hasn't been said? Yes, it's their masterpiece (though I firmly believe And Nothing... and Electr-o-Pura are close rivals); yes, it flirts with many subgenres (long feedback-pieces, jazz-inflected pop, unabashed alt-guitar worship, strummy acoustic Neil Young-esque pieces, clattering organ drone, percussion-oriented RnB/funk-lite...); yes it is funny, warm, emotionally involved, witty...damn. I just got a used vinyl of this, complete with the humorous faux-Matador releases. Where else did you think Condo Fucks came from?

(5:00p) Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
I didn't really get into Young till my mid-20s. Unlike many of my peers, I never remember my parents listening to him, probably due to the fact that they were teenagers in the mid-60s, and by the time Young was a mega-star, I'm pretty sure my parents had stopped buying records, trying instead to buy groceries for two young kids. This record is plaintive, and well-spoken (excepting the awful record cover); I feel like the acoustic/electric dichotomy between Side A and Side B work really well with this record. Partial to the acoustic side, lately.

Pure-voiced live version of "Sugar Mountain", complete with frequency-cutting, glorious harmonica.

(10:30p) the Rolling Stones - Goat's Head Soup
By this time, we'd downed the Yuengling, walked out into the dusk for a sixer of Coors Banquet tallboys (something very satisfying about the name of that beer), and returned to chew the fat about early musical experiences. Before heading out to the watering hole down the street, my buzzed brain needed some get-up/wake-up vibes, and Goat's Head Soup never disappoints. My second favorite Stones record, and one that is overlooked despite its plenitude of squelchy riffs, blown-out vocals, all the while exuding grime, sex, and excess. If you don't know it, you should!

Sunday, April 10th

(10:30a) Al Green - Greatest Hits
A tradition at Bloomington's Tracks, perhaps not started by record-shilling associate Mike H., though he certainly instructed me in the Ways. Tracks opened early on Sundays...earlier than any other non-breakfast or worship-serving place. The law of the land was that you had to at least break-in the morning with the Reverend...Al Green. Can't go wrong with most of his hits collections, one of which we would bust out with regularity. Some of the best memories of the store are coming in with a slight hangover, riding my bike under the Spring-canopied streets, and propping the door open, blasting the Reverend to the Canaanites in the street while the breeze mingled and cut-through the constant haze of Nag Champa. Almost makes me wistful for bygone days.

Not on Greatest Hits, but one of my lesser-known favorites. And yes, Al Green was an attempt to rectify the hangover induced by Saturday night's booze banquet.

(2:40p) Various Artists - Studio Roots 2
Another fine, fine compilation from the folks at Soul Jazz. This record connects to another Bloomington spring memory. At some point at tracks, I began digging into the equally-fantastic Trojan compilations, which the manager had burned copies of sitting in the promo drawer. Still in "professional musician" mode, I had bought with my meager savings (and help from my parents) a used VW Passat Wagon, with which I could cart around all my gear AND my P.A. system. Before that car shit the bed, I enjoyed a brief spring with the windows down and my first ever in-car CD-player. With the crabapples and dogwoods in full, fragrant bloom, I drove over to the Secretly Canadian warehouse to pick up some used CD sleeves to recycle for the Everything, Now! hand-painted Bible Universe edition, blasting the Trojan Dub compilation the whole time. It was the year's first near-70-degree day, and reggae had finally clicked. Sometimes understanding art is all about having a context in which to experience it fully; being young, enjoying warm weather, and thinking about upcoming artistic endeavours...I was not yet of the world, instead, I was floating somewhere above. Every Spring since, when warm weather first comes 'round the bend, I know it's reggae season again.

music diary project, day two & three

2011-04-08T14:52:00.005-04:00

Wednesday, April 6th
Pretty dry day. I think work was busy, and post-gym run (I'm one of the few who forgoes headphones in favor of listening to my inner rhythms) we got cleaned up and went on a date for sandwiches & beer. The weather was too nice not to!

(1:25p) Beastie Boys - "Make Some Noise"
Via Pitchfork alert, listened to a track from the upcoming Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. Unlike most (or all) of their previous borough-related effort, this one did seem to click. One part reverb-y, grungy drum track, and one part pitch-shiftin' distorted organ; it really is the perfect bed to let these aged rappers plant their (admittedly not-fresh) maxims in. One thing their vocals have gained over the years is flavor, and in-particular you should savor the transition of MCA's vocal stylings into a gravelly, Waits-ian timbre.

(3:40p) Wire - "Red Barked Trees"
Actually watched a Jimmy Fallon performance from this week. While their strengths are still evident, the fairly flavorless showmanship didn't do much to sell me on the song, in which one chord churned along while epithets for the future unfurled themselves. Then again, I've never had much attachment even to Pink Flag, which I listen to on rare occasions. I think I've never been able to cut through the dry, crackly production value...maybe one day this mental block will fade and I'll finally become enlightened. Similar mental blocks have delayed appreciation of the first Stone Roses record and other similarly too-Eighties sounding efforts.

Ah, abstract-ness. Mondrian much, guys? Will be interesting to see if the record is similarly stripped.

Thursday, April 7th
(11:00a) John Lennon/Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy Side A
Just got this record, though I'd never listened to it before. Started filling out my federal tax return, so I put it on. Though the production was more 80s than I expected (and try doing taxes while listening to the Ono moaning segue), I was enjoying it till Carlos, cat #2, decided to be cool and jump on the record player, before sitting down to a good lickfest. (Ono-related?) Side B will have to wait till another time.

(11:30a) Yuck - "Get Away"
Brought up by the estimable Tyler Clark, as they have a new record out on Fat Possum (which is ~~increasingly~~ no longer a blues label). Describing them in a G-chat session, the sum of our efforts was basically, "this is a 90s band." It's a Built to Spill/Dinosaur Jr./Sonic Youth/Pavement fuzzy guitar attack, heavyhanded at times but still sonically effective. I think this is the first single, and it's almost impossible for me not to like this, especially with that great, stomach-upsetting opening guitar "skreeeeeeeee!". I may forget about ever listening to the full-record unless I see it around, though maybe my lack-of-awareness of new records will finally cease in 2011.

(1:30p) Everything, Now! - Do It on the Moon Early Rough Mixes
Yeah, this is my band. This is our 6th record, and has been mostly recorded in my damp, freezing, cinder block basement. Had to listen to the first complete mixes of the record, begin to discover the little idiosyncrasies that you can see so much easier in a record you've been involved with, like re-reading your own words, alternatively grinning and wincing till you realize, "Hey, this is pretty good." I think this is and will be a good record; will anyone listen? Remains to be seen.

(2:30p) Sunroof! - Silver Bear Mist! 2xCD
A random purchase in a recent mailorder, this is a double-album by plenty prolific Matt Bower, out on one of my favorite labels in existence, VHF. I'd moved on to state taxes, and I think the universe was punishing me for listening to my own music. This is a squall of a double-record, most in a sonic range that is usually best expressed as tinnitus. Or maybe the patchouli rainforest incense was drowning out the low-end. Either way, much like burning extra-strong incense with your windows closed, this album was purification by fire, even at low volume. Sometimes you need an ear-cleaner like this, to wash out that ear-to-brain connection of all the junk we carelessly toss into it. Though I won't be digging into this often, it is recommended.

(4:30p) Oneida - Preteen Weaponry
My latest contact with Oneida has been the sprawling, 3-disc Rated O, which is more sonic narrative than record. Where it was a scatterplot of ideas, Preteen Weaponry is in their own words, "super fucking heavy, so be serious." It is definitely a haze of a record, all slow-burn and reminiscent of kraut & psych forebears, without directly ripping anything. While drummer Kid Millions is often the star of the show, this record is more about creating and maintaining an atmosphere, layers of smoldering guitar, distorted bass & keys, all shape-shifting and never quite resolving. This band continues to surprise and impress; they're never bored, and neither is the listener. One of my favorite Oneida records, up there with the classic Each One Teach One. Oh, and see them live.

Oneida playing "Preteen Weaponry" at Terrastock 2007. One of the best sets at the best show I've ever seen. Did I mention they played at Noon? Who needs lunch in lieu of this.

music diary project, day one

2011-04-06T13:39:00.005-04:00

Surfing around while brainstorming an upcoming post on experimental German rock-and-roll, I happened upon the Music Diary Project. Keep track of my listening habits for a week, why not? I missed the first day, but I'll just chalk it up to the dry spells incurred by being car-less (no more drive-time music listening daily) or entombed by winter's blues.

Tuesday, April 5th
(10:40a) Liliental - "Nachsaison" & "Wattwurm"
Scanning the internet for soundtracks to said German post, listened to these two loose jams by members of Kraan, Cluster, and more. The cover is a great beach-pastels painting of the members, like a synth-nerd supergroup. Musically...it is kind of an alien-pastoral aesthetic, not really a sum of its parts, but a derivation.

Who thought this was a good idea for the cover? Oh...1978.

(11:30a) Gang Gang Dance - "Mindkilla"
Via Pitchfork, inspired to listen after hearing their refreshingly good lead "single", "Glass Jar", a seriously-strange ambient slab of electronic, buoyant prog. "Mindkilla" was underwhelming, with its sense of structure and quasi-rap choruses. Adventurous, but not near the degree I was hoping for.

(2:40p) Fenn O'Berg - The Return of Fenn O'Berg
I like listening to stuff at work that I might not normally listen to in a home-situation. Isolating yourself with headphones is usually good for working on a single project; and Fennesz albums lend themselves well for buzzing through the background while working. This is a collaboration between Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter Rehberg. Slightly more dynamic than Fennesz-solo, more percussive than O'Rourke's shapelessness, this is a record that builds-and-disintegrates repeatedly, though in a decidedly non-dynamic setting. Snatches of strings and samples also abound, serving as detritus with which to scuff and layer over. Very thoughtful stuff, and on my first listen, much less extreme & strenuous than I expected.

I really like this cover art, too. Disconcerting human collage, very apropos of the sounds inside.

(6:30p) TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light
Via Rhapsody full album stream. While prepping curry-roasted cauliflower with rice and a tahini-lemon-garlic sauce, spun this through, and was impressed (despite the middling quality of Rhapsody's stream...yuck). Seemed more grabby than my first trip through Dear Science, though for the most part, as coolly restrained as that effort. The best two-song sequence was the ripping "No Future Shock" (whose intensity still pales in comparison to "Wolf Like Me", still TVoTR's barometer) and the heavy quietness of "Killer Crane", which felt very Reich-ian in its details, very movie-esque in its scope & sway.

March 2011 Mix: Slow Burn

2011-03-29T19:00:00.000-04:00

Recorded in glorious mono!

Click here to download.
Side A
1. Kreidler - Cube
2. Konono No. 1 - Kule Kule Reprise
3. Bablicon - Snipanet 1
4. Beach Boys - Do It Again
5. Olivia Tremor Control - I'm Not Feeling Human
6. Beatles - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
7. Sapat - Dark Silver

Side B
8. Can - Mushroom
9. Yo la Tengo - Nuclear War (Version 1)
10. Phantom Band - E.F. 1
11. Al Green - It Ain't No Fun to Me
12. Rolling Stones - Ain't Too Proud to Beg

The key to this mix was pacing...I wanted to keep things steady, pulling from records with no editing (what can I say, sometimes I can't hit the pause button fast enough on the stereo.) Kreidler starts things out with a pulse, almost dance music, but coming from a factory, or microwave. Segueing from such thoughtful, prim & precise into "Kule Kule Reprise", played on homemade giant thumb pianos made of old auto parts, magnets, junk, is an exercise in juxtaposition. Both retain formal elements of repetition, repetition, repetition, layers indecipherably moving in and out of the mix. "Snipanet 1" enters with the first riff, although a bass guitar riff, jazzy but backed by some suitcase percussion.

I once watched a pallet full of Bablicon CDs get sent to be destroyed. I only rescued 3 of each, and now feel guilty for not piling them all in a dusty box. Some of the most overlooked, adventurous sounds of the 90s and early aughts.

Very organic; which doesn't describe the synth-stomp that begins "Do It Again", which is about as heavy as the Beach Boys get. Skronky, filtered guitars sounding like live wires (is there anyone that uses recording like an instrument as well as OTC did?) highlight "I'm Not Feeling Human", which toes the line between the well-combed Boys and their moptop counterparts, who follow with the galloping story of "Bungalow Bill." Sapat ends Side A (it's vinyl, you gotta keep it to around 20, fools) with "Dark Silver", an unhinged bit of murky, funked-rock, guitar and woodwind solos snaking through the tree-tops.

Kreidler - Kremlin rules from Jörg Langkau on Vimeo.

Try not to blink.

Always wanted to begin a side with "Mushroom", one of the most unique sounding compositions of all-time, with the standout being the shuffling drum beat that has the odd reverb of a fetid tunnel, or laundry shaft. "Nuclear War (Version 1)" is a more light-hearted pieces that again possesses one of my favorite beats in this sing-along version of Sun Ra's "classic." Phantom Band takes it further into space with the calm & collected electro-reggae of "E.F. 1", a smooth landing into the stutter-stomp of "It Ain't Fun to Be Me", finishing with the amped-up "Ain't To Proud to Beg."

Understated but classic cover. And I left off the version with little kids singing; but I'm sure you can find it. Surprisingly feel-good!

Slow Burn

2011-03-15T14:55:00.000-04:00

Things have been slow, lately. Waiting for the season to turn gradually from Winter's thaw to a sponge of a Spring. Working on my March mix (vinyl-only; also called Slow Burn), and started recording an as-yet-unnamed instrumental project yesterday in my basement (Infinite Spirit Rituals? what do you think...). Here are some slow jams, like watching buds form on skinny tree limbs, like the slow-drip of the last gutter icicle.

Cat Power w/ Loren Mazzacane Connors - The Leopard and the Lamb (LIVE)

Connors signature anchored chime move slowly through a slight gain hiss, crawling towards the light. I wish they'd make an album together, the perfect pairing of syrupy-slow vocals and slowly-metamorphosing blues that meet in a glorious balm.

Faust - Jennifer

The bass line ripples through this song, a pond circling in on itself, the guitar melody circling slowly behind, blending into a hazy, dreamscape chorus that gives in to the delayed-out bass again. I'm not sure who Jennifer is, but I feel an utter calm descend like a warm blanket. Really dig on the fog-adelic forest too, since the guitars seem to be emanating from a far off room, perhaps coated in moss.

February 2011 Mix

2011-02-16T15:50:00.004-05:00

I was going to put a galaxy inside the drain, but I'll let you imagine that instead.

1 - Yo La Tengo - The Weakest Part
2 - Stereolab - Captain Easychord
3 - Broadcast - Pendulum
4 - Brian Eno - 2 Forms of Anger
5 - Ride - Taste
6 - Dinosaur Jr - Been There All the Time
7 - Flying Saucer Attack - Wish
8 - Michael Rother - Blauer Regen
9 - Television - Careful
10 - Elvis Costello - Less Than Zero
11 - Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb (Live)
12 - Link Wray - Georgia Pines
13 - Jack Rose - Linden Ave Stomp
14 - Faust - It's a Bit of a Pain
15 - Tom Waits - Virginia Avenue
Get it here.

This month's mix is comprised completely of stuff I've been listening to & enamored with as of late. During the recent ice storm, we pretty much listened to albums all day long while baking bread, cookies, pizza. Had to lead off with Yo La Tengo as we just saw them live at the Vogue a couple weeks back, in the teeth of winter. Much of the other stuff are recent additions to my collection, either digitally or vinyl.

Musically, I was trying to kind of segue through frozen weather into the great meltdown wherein Indiana becomes a sodden, muddy sponge. So while it begins warm & bouncy, almost holiday-like with "The Weakest Part", it soon moves to a colder location with the sterile, precise groove of "Captain Easychord" and the frosty, ethereal-quality of "Pendulum"'s menacing, insistent & dark form of pop (re-visiting Broadcast's catalog like many other people in light of lead singer Trish Keenan's passing).

"2 Forms of Anger" continues this train of thought, beginning with sounds of industrial waste, perhaps the post-internet clatter of once-great and now-empty totems of manufacturing. Still, at the end it bursts into a great, kraut-y beat reminiscent of Eno's best 70's work. "Taste" takes that insistence of beat & sound a notch up, adding the right amount of jangle & melody. Controlled freak-out if you will, perfect for cabin fever, as is "Been There All the Time", an apt epithet for the everpresent music & solo-inclined mood of J. & company.

Flying Saucer Attack's Self-Titled debut LP. Find it strangely appropriate to their sound. And along with Ride & Brian Eno, part of the blurred landscape-covers trio on this mix.

The deep-freeze sets in with "Wish", which gives me the alien-feeling of gazing out onto what was once a yard full of plant fibers, animal detritus, wind-blown trash, but has become a pearly sheet of round-contoured ice. Are we on another planet? Humanity returns with "Blauer Regen", which begins with warm guitar harmonics, rays of light that lead to the thaw audibly present in the songs's second half.

"Careful" is simple, fresh, spring. Like how you feel the first time it gets above 35-degrees. Still cold, but you don't care. "Less than Zero" and "Under My Thumb" get progressively more swampy in their riffs, sustained chords buzzing by like the extending hours of the day. The marimba-turned-bass line in the latter is plant-like in its branching off, twisting and turning in vine-like fashion. But not until "Georgia Pines" do we actually hit the swamp, following Link down a rabbit path back where the pine needles render sleeping bags useless.

Now yer in the pines. Having recently drove the back-roads from Montgomery into Florida, I can tell you that these places still exist.

"Linden Ave Stomp" continues the warm feeling, whereas before you were in the pines, now you seem to be floating over. An aerial shot, black-and-white. Landmarks. "Home of..." signs. There's a lilt present though, in some of the chords, hinting that you might not be out of the woods. "It's a Bit of a Pain" is a mellow end to the day, engine-buzz doppler-ing past your house at sunset, strangers clambering down from the bus-stop, talking non-sense. You know the sounds that are almost good because they go away? They're in this piece. Genius! "Virginia Avenue" is all denouement, shambling to bed. I see the sun glow in the distance, the days finally lengthened again. The possibility of unfulfilled promise exists in spring. "And let me tell you...I'm dreamin'..."

did you hear the one about the snow

2011-02-05T14:55:00.000-05:00

Being all weathered-in (even the gym closed for a day), we've been watching plenty of movies, in-between catching up on Egypt-happenings via the New Yorker's excellent "Dispatches from Egypt" online series and frequent Newshour viewing. Also, completed a large amount of updates to the oft-neglected Everything, Now! internet portal, including figuring out how to stream 4 of our albums in their entirety, and putting a sampler EP up for download.

Cover art for our new CD 4xEP...

In-between, managed to escape the icy clutches of the near-Eastside to see (for the first-time, shame on me) the best American band of the past quarter-century: Yo La Tengo. Post-brewpub pints & burgers, we caught both halves of their set, the first of which was decided by the spin of a wheel. Though I was rooting for a Condo Fucks set, I was pleasantly surprised by DUMP, as bassist James McNew took over Ira's axe(s) and played a stellar, pretty clean and vibrato-y set of guitar-pop numbers. Plus a shredfest at the end, and the dude can shred. The second half of the set was not surprising, but allowed for all the YLT tropes. After classic mellow-organ-and-polyrhythm opener "Autumn Sweater", there was the R&B skronk of recent jam "Periodically Double or Triple". Other highlights were Summer Sun standout "Little Eyes", and on the opposite side of the noise-spectrum, aged guitar-freakout proto-punk blast of "Artificial Heart". There was the requisite noise-kraut jam which saw Ira switching guitars, James roughhousing his bass into his full-stack, loads of feedback closing out their set pre-encore. The encore was mostly quiet & acoustic, a warming coda on a below-zero night.

Pretty much ready for a road-trip to India.

After watching quirky doc Home Movie earlier in the week (a must-see for the Gator Farm owner alone), on a whim we watched director Chris Smith's more recent offering The Pool, a serious comedy/coming-of-age tale in Hindi, set in the beautiful city of Goa. Besides making me want to travel immediately, it was an unexpectedly great movie. The dialog was warm in tone, funny, poignant, smart; the colors fantastically vivid yet real, the locations full of dusty beauty. Unfortunately, you have to compare it to Slumdog Millionaire, but I feel like The Pool is much more realistic and touching in its depth. Just an excellent story.

Get out of my head, Robert Blake. With your no-eyebrows face and glistening hair!

Last night we had a double feature of Lost Highway and...Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening. After the anxiety-ridden creepitude of another Lynch feature, I guess I just needed a palate-cleanser. Lost Highway, upon second viewing, may be my favorite non-Peaks Lynch creation. The story circles around on itself, the sense of suffocation and dread is fairly thick throughout, and the pace is deliberately slow yet carries momentum. Clearly going to need a third viewing. As for Aziz, his post-meta-whatever style does hold water; story-jokes about messing with a younger cousin via-Facebook and hanging out with Kanye both carry weight. For someone who's schtick is so heavy on "not-giving-a-fuck", all the intra-family joking was extra-funny to see. Meta, indeed.

musing on 27

2011-01-12T16:14:00.000-05:00

The first time I really felt old happened at a house show. I was in Greenville, North Carolina, a shitty town in the no-man's tobacco plains between the college metro areas to the west, and the barrier islands of the Outer Banks several hours further east. Maybe it wasn't as shitty as it appeared on this particular day, one of constant drizzle, the whole atmosphere remaining a cold, steely gray through all waking hours. It was early November, and we were on tour.

Played in a house like this. Maybe this house? Add soiled mattresses against the wall, elbow-to-ass crowd, and sour puddles of beer and cigarette butts.

Summer is prime touring season for any number of reasons. Weather is great for driving long-distances, bands full of college-kids have extra free-time, people like to go out more often, spend more money, get more drunk. November is not prime touring season. It is cold, or rainy, or close to the holidays, impressing their moral glow on social activities. And the November immediately following one of the biggest recessions since the 1930's, well, let's just say this might have been the worst-timed tour possible. I was burnt out from working a full-time job and trying to book shows that we wouldn't completely lose our ass on. The van had died in Texas more than a year previous, thus we'd be packing all of our gear into Dave's mom's minivan.

If I had the choice between buying booze and forgetting myself, or buying records and thinking about the human condition...fuck it, I'm going to buy booze. Idealism fades in the face of shitty economic conditions, especially when any media source you can hear or see is inundating you with fear. Fear of disappearing jobs, fear of government, fear of your neighbors, your boss, fear of change, fear of anything that could change your shitty way of life.

Insert 5 dudes (the smallest, me at 5'11" & 160 lbs). 1 full drumset. 2 guitar amps. 1 bass amp. 1 keyboard amp. 1 box of cables. 3 guitar cases. 1 keyboard. 1 keyboard stand. Sleeping bags, food, coats and hats.

So, everyone there got drunk. Raging drunk, set-piles-of-stuff-on-fire drunk, pour-a-Forty-into-the-donation-bucket drunk. But it was a good-time buzz, enjoying the bands. We turned in a sweaty set marred only by Dave breaking strings and sitting down in the room's only floorspace--directly in-front of the kick-drum.

Outside, the fire now composed of treated lumber pallets, its sinewy, chemical smoke trail twisting up to the streetlight illuminating the sandy yard, we sat on broken benches, salvaged chairs, overturned objects. Kids (twenty-somethings, really) were buzzing about while Titus Andronicus set up for their guitar-army overdriven punk sound. Their van shone somewhere in the distance, a reminder of how far we hadn't come; 25 years old and still borrowing someone's minivan to pile in.

Titus Andronicus. This show did lack crowd-surfing, since the room was barely wider than the length of a body. Nice dudes, they offered to trade albums, and were a bit taken aback when we told them we had five. One asked, "How old are you guys?" I spent most of my time outside coveting their van and probable-hotel-money.

A couple songs into their energetic set, I was squeezed out of the bedroom-sized space by jostling bodies. Scrambled back through the fetid kitchen to the fire, still burning. From inside, the chords began playing a note-for-note cover of Weezer's "The Sweater Song." Kids in the yard, kitchen, street, immediately exclaimed, dashed in noisily to fill the room even more beyond its breaking point.

I stared into the fire, put my hands deeper into my pockets, watched the bodies stream in until the yard was quiet save for the brief sounds of traffic, moisture popping, snapping as the fire leached into the sky.

buttermilk and/or bringing the funk

2011-01-09T13:36:00.010-05:00

This week I've really been ruminating on buttermilk, especially after learning an awesome buttermilk recipe from Megan, the older-bro's girlfriend.

She got it from a bread-recipe collection from baker-extraordinaire, Beth Hensperger. You can get it too, via Google Books, here. Hensperger says,

"This is the breadmaker's 'little black dress,' a beautiful bread to grace any table..."

and it really is. Deeply bronzed on top, with a nice sheen (via the egg wash prior to baking), it's awesome for toast, sandwiches...and if you let it get stale (tough to do, I know), supremely great French toast.

The other day I decided I wanted to make some buttermilk cornmeal pancakes, inspired by this Serious Eats restaurant brief. Some quick searching yielded a Bon appetit recipe.

Piggly Wiggly--I've almost forgiven you for wronging me so.

As a kid, my Tennesseean (by way of California, Indiana, Nevada, & Arizona) grandpa often made buttermilk hotcakes for breakfast; I despised them. They had an almost-creamy texture, very soft, with the pungency that comes from buttermilk evident in each bite. My distaste may have come from a singular event; as a youngster I atypically helped myself to a refill while at the kids' table during a family get-together. I saw the familiar "Piggly-Wiggly" logo, and poured what I assumed was milk into a tall glass. I took a sip before sitting down, and made a face that was referenced for years by older family members, who apparently watched with humorous detachment the entire sequence of events.

Injera--maybe the most unique bread product I've ever eaten.
Currently have a heavy jonesing for Major Restaurant.

But I guess since then my tastes have advanced---some of my favorite flavors in the world are fermented. (Which as it turns out, may be healthier than I knew, according to this article, in which people are only slightly more crazy than college-friends I assisted in consuming plenty of dumpster-salvaged foods.) Sourdough bread, Greek-style yogurt, beer, the fantastic Ethiopian flatbread "injera"---and now, buttermilk. Back to the pancakes at hand, (or maybe Johnnycakes or hoecakes, though the latter is linked to a Paula Deen recipe, a reference I wash my hands of) they were fantastic. A little thinner than typical pancakes, but with the cornmeal they turn out of the pan a burnished gold. Using some blackberries (we froze several gallons picked from Amelia's grandparents' bushes this summer), a couple tablespoons sugar, water, and cornstarch, I made a simple syrup to put on top. Pretty close to perfect...I'm glad I've come around to fermentation.

stasis

2010-11-14T12:30:00.004-05:00

Lately, especially concerning music, I have become intrigued, almost obsessive, over the idea of stasis, of nothing happening. Musically, nothing can take many forms: repetition, using empty space to define a song, lack of progression, lack of or ultra-rigid structure, dynamic stasis, static or field recording as silence.

An idea, fully conceived and then performed, can add to a piece of music's sense of stasis. It took me several years to figure out a quality of Landing's music that seemed indefinable. Upon hearing their early records, it struck. Rarely do you hear musicians that emerge from their own pre-history with such a fully-formed, unique-to-themselves, sound. Usually, you can count on a first record to be such a pastiche of influences (or, if you're unlucky, merely a weak rip of a single influence) that judging it is more similar to judging how well a stomach digests a particular food than how well songs are formed. Shit...that is a terrible analogy. It's like this: assimilating one's influences is usually a lengthy process, and with the ever-cheapening & hi-fi home-recording systems on the up-and-up, the album is easier than ever to make. Thus, new crops of pretenders all the time.

It's rare to see a band who isn't a pretender at first. I mean, the Stones, the Beatles...you name it and they were probably aping their idols. Sure, you can tie Landing's sound to the guitar interweaving of My Bloody Valentine, the gauzy synth-guitar interplay of Slowdive, the deliberate pace of Low, or the blown-out, stretched melodies of Neu!/Harmonia. But none of these truly predicts the sounds present on Circuit and Oceanless. Delayed-out guitars circle around each other, layers descending down gradually, moving through the song, then disappearing. Distortion is used occasionally to great effect, a bass-line blasting through feedback-fuzz to begin a track, an organ chord-progression taking on an extra edge.

This is studied music, even if improvised. Songs are delineated in map-like fashion, expanding beyond borders. In hopes of soon starting my long-delayed solo project, this music is a touchstone I'll be returning to often. If you're going to execute an idea...do it well!

pacific northwest redux

2010-11-06T12:49:00.005-04:00

"there's a big day comin', and i can hardly wait..."

view from James Turrell's "Light Reign" at UW-Henry Art Gallery.

flying into seattle was beautiful. the day was clear, and sometime after passing the continental divide, the clouds melted away, and the craggy landscape gave way to greenery, and then mount rainier, which we banked around in an unbelievably blue sky.

i've had the opportunity to travel to most of the continental states via tour van, an amazing way to see so much of the country's landscape, but so little of the country's life. spending 9 to 12 waking hours (less if you count sleeping, and subtract for drinking oblivion, foraging for food, endless load-ins & outs, following compact cars into the gaping suburbs in search of carpet to wearily collapse on...) is no real way to actually experience a city. getting to spend the better part of five (incredibly sunny!) days in seattle was a great time, and allowed me enough time to get a feel for the general vibe of the city. would i want to live here in the (near) future? yes.

we took bus lines around the city, walked hills, museums, galleries, universities, frequented ethnic restaurants and scenic views, hung at hipster joints, family pubs, almost-suburban coffeeshops, chinese bbq shops...

lots of thanks have to go to my friends randy & annie, not just for showing the boldness to move into the unknown, but for extending excessive amounts of midwestern hospitality in the far west. randy's apartment was our homebase, and he took us to some supremely great parks, restaurants, even drove to the UW gallery (and made it through the whole thing!). annie met up with us two days in-a-row, despite working full shifts that started before 6am! we hung out at some of her haunts, and met some super nice & cool people in the process. these are all things that make me feel better about moving than the mere prospect of employment.

conquering broke-down piet at golden gardens, sunset.

currently the plan is...to have no plan. fall always feels like the natural time to move, for whatever reason. i need to keep my eyes and ears open for job prospects, and then hope to make the jump at some point...after all, my brother, randy, and annie all moved into seattle (proper) at the age of 27.

speaking of my brother, i'd be an ass if i didn't mention his & megan's hospitality, showering us with superfly meals (including possibly the best of my life at Vij's in Vancouver), a piping-hot wood-fired stove every night (and more than a couple mornings), multiple tasty well-aged bombers and bourbon, as well as the finest hippie-loft lodgings possible, complete with 3 skylights mere inches from our soundly-sleeping faces! after running all around seattle, it was nice to take it easy in the more laid-back atmosphere of bellingham. that, combined with the aforementioned food & booze, one of the better record stores i've encountered, and getting to split a few stacks of lumber like a true nor'westerner, made for a vacation's vacation.

flying back into indianapolis (via detroit), it was again sunny, but the only visible landmark greeting us was the hot air balloon hovering over conner prairie, squished in-between diminishing farmlands and bloated, perfectly-curved suburbs. we were ready to go back before we even landed.

psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 2 (or: unattached thought stew)

2010-07-13T13:23:00.005-04:00

Friend (& super-great booking dude) Dan C. told me, pre-Tortoise show, "Yeah they're really good for 5 minutes, but after that...it's the same thing. You get the idea." Now, he may have been acting salty due to Ghana going up 1-0 on the U.S. in their quarterfinal Cup match. Or, he may have had match fatigue....er, show fatigue. As a veteran of playing 300+ shows, and attending many more, I can totally understand seeing a band several times and not continuing to be impressed. However, I wonder if this doesn't say something more about our culture in general, and even something about me. A predilection to krautrock, attending Tortoise shows, and reading a 1300-page World War I-era fictional tome doesn't exactly place me in the same time-space-continuum as the rest of the Tweet-feeding, aerosol-pancake-eating, Generation ADD.

yes---this is real. pancakes are so hard to make!

I'm not trying to claim that I have some sort of super-powered attention span (I don't; as evidence, I have 6 tabs open on this Chrome browser); and although I often want to (after working with several thousand kids this year), I'm not claiming that a shorter attention span is inherent in Generation Z. In fact, my only claim is that (and I just read this somewhere on Internet...can't remember) we wear our consumable art like identity badges. This is some sort of filter for most people. "I like this_____this______and_______, what about you?" A creative filtering. Unfortunately, when you aren't into People Magazine and Baconzillas, your filter is coming on pretty strong. What have I been listening to this month? Mostly early Stereolab and CAN records. This sentence automatically flies me to NeverNeverLand. Not that I have beef with that, but what has filtered my art digestion process to the point where I am interested in something that is uninteresting to most...or, how did I end up consuming the mostly inconsumable?

CAN...a little less hip in the late 80s. But who wasn't?

The first time I heard Tago Mago, the first time I heard Trout Mask Replica...these were bizarre experiences. I'm not sure how my brain processed these---was I being influenced by those around me who were partial to such records? Yes, but if that was always the case, I'd love Modest Mouse, or the Pixies...both of which I appreciate but get no emotional grab from. I think maybe repetition is the key...something very mathematic, very primal about krautrock. Even about this Dos Passos book...events pile upon events in such random fashion that the written world becomes a fractal. World War I is merely a piece of pattern in the midst of a thousand others... Perhaps by following my natural Id, my inner circadian rhythm, the tide of my body, compels me to follow art that self-repeats, that tessellates in often-times unnoticeable ways, that digests-and-then-echoes.

Now, to figure out how to seek repetition in art, but not life. Feeling the need to break out of whatever fractal I've woven myself into lately. Immerse myself in other patterns. Other weather systems. Maybe a coast, or two?

weekly list, vol. 5

2010-07-01T13:45:00.000-04:00

here's to another bi-weekly post. work has been crazy, and lots of shows/practices/gardening/visitin'/airport-runnin' has been going on as well.

these dudes were not this chilled out in the 100-degree room at the bishop

saw:
--tons of the world cup--
i was lucky enough to have several days off during the first couple weekends of group play, and devoured all of the U.S. games, the latter two of which were two of the most incredible games i've ever watched. i think it was 14+ years of playing soccer year-round, thinking about the world cup, the US team, tab ramos (!!!), looking at jersey's in the eurosport catalog...i think all of that built up an emotional investment in the national team that i still retain. despite not having access to many soccer broadcasts (and sorry...i just can't watch MLS. to me, the MLS is like the last 30 minutes of the US-Ghana match: long-balls all the time. show me some possession, fer cryin' out loud!), watching the national team can still throw my nerves into a frenzy. keeping track of/watching the algeria game at work was roughly equivalent to downing 6 pots of coffee over a 2-hour period. just shredded my insides. watching the US-Ghana game with mostly bloomington peeps i hadn't met was still a great collective experience. i don't know of another sport that inspires such revelry, such archetypal human experience. ball + grass + goal. poetry.

heard:
--tortoise (live @ the bishop in bloomington)--
i'm somewhat familiar with tortoise's back catalog, and recently enjoyed quite a bit the monochormatically-covered Beacons of Ancestorship. bloomington is pretty much the best place to go in the state, and the Bishop is a small venue (150 would fill it out) with the 2 most important qualities of small, nice clubs. Good sound and good (and cheap!) draft beer selection! So, when I heard Tortoise was going to be in town, I had to buy tickets. Amelia couldn't go, so former Muncie-dude Lord Zed went with. Aside from the club being 90+ degrees due to how hot it was outside,,,it was a really great show. Sound was superb, band was in top form...totally awesome to see a band like that in such a small club. Although I heard earlier that day that Tortoise, "is good for 5 minutes...and then you get the idea," I found the opposite to be true. They're good for 5 minutes, and then my brain locked into the grooves, and they were pretty awesome the rest of their 90-minute-plus set. And! It ended before midnight. Which just goes to show---rock 'n roll with older dudes are the best shows to see. Last time I saw Dinosaur Jr., they also wrapped by 11pm! I mean, you can still party afterwards...no need to wait till 11:30pm to start the show (I'm looking at you, Bloomington).

--consumed--
--my homemade pizza of the summer (made with light wheat peasant loaf dough----makes totally bomb pub-style pizza crust): fresh whole milk mozzarella + fresh basil + tomato/basil sauce + thin sliced andouille sausage. !!! so good.
--cheap & juicy pork brisket sandwiches at the smokehouse on shelby. and sweet potato krinkle fries! had never even seen these before. now...if only the service wasn't so on-and-off. but still, 6.50 for the sandwich plus 2 sides...good deal.
--made the brother, wes, try indian food for the first time at the lunch buffet at shalimar. everything was fresh, garlic naan was pretty supreme. now that i have a dining card....i'll have to go back. plus, wes didn't eat himself into a hole like i did.
--some mole enchiladas (with great chips & salsa) at bloomington's el norteno. only about 8 bux, and the mole sauce, while not as rich as el sol's, and with a pronounced cocoa-heavy taste, was pretty tasty for being relatively inexpensive, and not to mention, plentiful. if only i'd have thought about how hot the bishop would be later that evening...
--AND, perhaps most importantly, after making an early-AM airport run, i successfully conquered the U-shaped bar at the steer-in. where i injected a pot of coffee and a diner breakfast coated in tabasco while still cracking on john dos passos' U.S.A. trilogy.

weekly list, vol. 4

2010-06-13T17:54:00.004-04:00

shit has been flying by. or maybe it's all the mexican coffee inside me, post-getting home at 4am following rock-and-roll in muncie. hmm...

this is a dude you should know.

saw:
--in bruges--
an uncomfortably funny buddy-(non)cop movie. made me want to go back to belgium sooner rather than later. colin farrell is supremely sublime at being petty & annoying. i know some people don't like his style, but he's pretty great in this movie. brendan gleeson is a great foil. now all i can think of is karate-choppin' a midget...
--up in the air--
i'll admit it: i'm pretty much a fan of anything george clooney does. (re: michael clayton). does that make it a man-crush? will sean connery be jealous if i say yes? this is a post-modern relationship comedy/drama that hits closer than you think. throw in all the ties to the recession, and this is one of the better movies i've seen lately that didn't have a yurt in it.
--an education--
i didn't realize this was going to be a romantic comedy before i started watching it! that said, i did enjoy...though i felt like i knew what was going to happen for quite awhile before it did. still though, i can dig on all the "oh, i am so bohemian" vibes that get crushed in this movie. it ain't about filling a role, it's about living your life.

read:
--500 pages into dos passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
this keeps getting better. knee-deep in World War I, full of graft, sex, shrapnel, architecture, culture-clash...things don't really change, do they?

heard:
--cast king's saw mill man--
while volunteering at secretly canadian, i came upon, in the stack of damaged discards, an old bluesman's release on the excellent label out of chicago, Locust. the story itself would be great without the existence of the record. man documents the music of the hills, hears about an old songwriter who'd cut a side for Sun Records in the 50s. tracks him down, begins visiting regularly, begins playing music regularly. convinces him to record. saw mill man is about as spare as it gets, usually just 2 guitars, drums enter the record only once. "saw mill man" is a somber, dark account of the workingman, but it's not all doom and gloom. "peggy" is a shambling piece of a love song about a daughter, belted out through past-prime vocal chords. the closer "outlaw" is a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic blues as i've ever heard or understood. gonna be returning to this record for awhile...

consumed:
--pretty good burgers, supreme garlic/parsley fries, and a nice shake at boogie burger
--korean food for the first time ever at mama's house. probably the most interesting introduction to a cuisine i've ever seen.
--lots of fresh basil & whole milk mozzarella homemade pizza. fantastic!
--homemade mac 'n cheese with my new favorite cheese combo: raw milk white cheddar & fontina. soooooo awesome. leftover it is downright incredible. if only i could not eat some as soon as i make it.
--super great tenderloin at savage's alehouse in muncie. probably my favorite laid-back bar in the state. plus, where else can you listen to Television and sip on great beers?
--had a north coast pranqster for the first time, and really dug it. forgot that north coast is who makes old rasputin....king of motor-oil-brews. yum!

weekly list, vol. 3

2010-05-31T21:09:00.006-04:00

was in chicago all last weekend, so this is a two-for-one!

saw:
--tulpan--
two yurt-based movies in a number of weeks....i may have yurt fever. is that a thing? anyways, this is a kazakhstan-set film about the trials and tribulations of ex-sailor asa, looking for his path, and a wife, on the steppes of kazakhstan. just as desolate (maybe even more-so) than the weeping camel--but with more human elements. really enjoyed this movie, too. something about the deliberate pacing and austerity of central asian/eastern european movies that i really dig on. the people have everything at their fingertips, but in a real, inverse-of-the-internet way.
--30 rock--watched the pilot & first few episodes on the last afternoon in chicago. show is by far the funniest thing on TV, and alec baldwin possibly the greatest laugh-stifler around.

read:
--still working on dos passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
finished the first volume in transit to chicago via (highly-recommended!) megabus. still entranced. while rolling around on chicago's public transit system, feeling the vibrations of the track, the slow shuffle-sway of bodies, the mechanically-timed announcements: i began to sense dos passos' feeling of america as a strange, living & breathing machine, full of irregular cogs in the infinite shape of humanity. to sense the present-palpable at a time so far in the past...

heard:
--tons of Stereolab--
particularly mars audiac quintet, which is as full of kraut-grooves that get-in and get-out as i could've hoped. i also snagged the following thangs, all used, in chicago (reckless is the new bane of my existence):
rolling stones - hot rocks 1964-1971 2xLP
rolling stones - december's children (and everybody's) LP
rolling stones - get yer ya ya's out LP
rolling stones - it's only rock and roll LP
alice coltrane - Huntington Ashram Monastery LP
CD's:
stereolab - mars audiac quintet
stereolab - the groop played space age bachelor pad music
stereolab - switched on stereolab
phantomband - nowhere
irmin schmidt - anthology: soundtracks (1978-1993) 3xCD
pelt - s/t
cast king - saw mill man
v/a - nigeria 70: the definitive story of funky lagos
more words on a lot of these later as i digest them...

consumed:
haven't ran the last 2 weeks, after being sick, then the parents being in town. it may be known as my "meat"-cation.
--in chicago: corned-beef encased "teuben" dog at hot doug's, the YOB at kuma's corner, and some pork belly brisket at fiddlehead cafe. top ratings to all three.
--in indy: steak sandwich at chatham tap, jockamo's pizza prior to superb indianapolis indians game & prior to superb show at the vollrath. introduced the parents to the best cajun food at papa roux. dinner for my grandma's 80th b-day at romano's macaroni grill---which was actually more than dece.
--on the homemade front:
wes & i cooked up 6 lbs. of pork shoulder BBQ in my pressure cooker, along with a mountain of potato salad, and refrigerator pickles, for a get-together on friday at our house. amelia also made some amazing rhubarb cobbler which will now be called "rhubarb delight". this was washed down with growlers of every standard sun king brew, and some sides & desserts brought by other swell folks.
quaffed some ridiculously delicious smoked ribs at aunt deb's on race day, along with leftover potato salad, macaroni salad, beans, two other salads (fruit vinaigrette & layer salad), amelia's cookies, mom's scones, and more. also spread the word of sun king ESB, and my homebrewed ESB to share.
bottled the wit w/ bitter orange peel & white pepper with alex on wednesday. hope this is the best brew yet!

next time, many more words on records!

weekly list, vol. 2

2010-05-16T13:55:00.002-04:00

being sick the entire weekend yer off sucks. that being said, here's a list!

saw:
--tell no one--
amelia heard about this french thriller exactly a year ago on NPR, and after she watched it tuesday night (i went to sleep), she couldn't stop talking about it. or go to sleep until around 4am. watched it on thursday...and it was pretty good all the way through. smarter and with better performances than...
--michael clayton--
i guess it was the week of thrillers. i was pleasantly surprised by this movie, as long as i didn't think too hard about the too-easy unjust corporation. plus, i like george clooney. all told, it was less thrilling (though with less loose ends than) tell no one.
--the weeping camel--
by far the best movie we watched last week, even though i was feverish & ache-filled while doing so. a quiet, stark-yet-touching account of mongolians living in the desolate, windswept gobi desert, and their quest to reunite a camel & its calf, rejected from nursing since birth. all the sounds in this movie, from the near-constant wind, to the ritual pouring, stirring, and casting of milk into the breeze, to the groans, bleats, chuffs, and chewing emanating from the host of camels and sheep. a movie i wouldn't mind watching again...and i never watch movies twice!

camels: a bit unsightly, aren't they?

heard:
--cocteau twins - heaven or las vegas--
checked out this and a singles collection after reading about cocteau twins in one of those terrible "hear these 1000 records" compilation books. realized i'd never actively listened to any cocteau twins. i'm more than happy with this mix of shimmering, shoegaze & tremolo-ed out guitars over kraut-y drums that don't sound too 80s-ish (usually takes me a long time to get past that; re: stone roses' first record). of course...this record is from 1993. still...enjoying this quite a bit through headphones. not as much as slowdive, but it isn't quite that atmospheric.

read:
--more of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
almost 300 pages in now, and just recently have some of the narratives started to intersect. none have really collided, and some have just barely touched. still pretty wowed by his scope of early 20th century american life...almost enough so to go buy a suit and go get a fantastically odd job by worming my way into high society. is that still possible?

consumed:
--for the first time ever, i added bacon to my homemade mac'n'cheese. this was the best decision i've made in a while.
--friday made pizza (with amelia's new crust...which was pretty much better than mine) with fresh mozz, bacon, and banana peppers. throw in a bottle of red wine.
--awesome jamaican patties with my brother at....patties of jamaica of course. really should eat these more often, though they are highly addictive. pastry + spiced meat = yes.
--el sol de tala on thursday with amelia's parents & sister. still by far the best mexican in town.

now to try & rest/heal up before band practice!

weekly list, vol. 1

2010-05-08T12:05:00.004-04:00

things i heard, read, saw, and possibly ate/drank in the last week.

saw:
--american experience: roads to memphis--
despite all my reading about the kennedy assassination, i'd never really investigated the assassination of dr. king. roads to memphis was pretty sad, but it's something you can't turn away from. when it was over, i felt like that days events were still echoing, rippling out into the now. also: i had no idea james earl ray was a fugitive long enough to escape to london, and only just missed a flight to rhodesia.
--trafic (1971)--
amelia didn't really like this french comedy of errors, and at first glance, i wasn't really into it either. a bumbling designer (mr. hulot, apparently a recurring character) follows his designer car to an auto show in amsterdam, and all sorts of hijinx ensue along the way. the best shots and scenes are the monotony of the road, complete with engine and interstate noise levels. also great were the recurring shots of apparent everymen/everywomen, waiting in traffic, succumbing to habits of nosepicking, yawning, etc. not something i would watch again intently, but something i might leave on in the background. also: the little 5-or-so-note melody from the score wormed its way into my brain, all fresh & bright.

heard:
--yo la tengo--Electr-O-Pura and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out--
definitely a yo la tengo week. after spending weeks with the b-sides & covers collection Genius + Love = Yo la Tengo, i reconvened with 2 records from opposite sides of their spectrum. Electr-O-Pura is mid-90s guitar-buzz that rarely relents. Alt-rocking "Tom Courtenay" and skronky "False Alarm" are two standouts here. And Then Nothing... is the quietest YLT record, less breezy than Summer Sun, but heavy in a way that even the album cover nods to. "You Can Have it All" is pure pop, sweeter and shorter-lasting than Flavor-Ice. "Saturday" is drum-machine-dub filtered through the usual instrumental suspects, organ and guitar-feedback.

read:
--Janet Malcolm's "iphigenia in forest hills" in the New Yorker--
a lengthy summation of a recent somewhat-bizarre, completely complicated murder trial in NYC. while you end up feeling pity/remorse for the protagonist, you never really get a sense of her innocence in any amount. still, malcolm makes you feel for the-guilty-who-are-wronged, a subset of people that never merit much consideration. if you can't protect the weakest amongst a population; who can you protect?
--John Dos Passos' U.S.A.--
finally hacked into this 1000+ page monster that i acquired this summer while browsing for nothing-in-particular at Bloomington's Caveat Emptor. picked it up due to it's seemingly enormous scope. only 40 pages in, i've just scratched the surface of a single narrator (i believe there are upwards of ten), and am becoming accustomed to Dos Passos' accumulation of songs, facts, news headlines, and first-person detritus in-between the more narrative sections of the book. Very rough-and-tumble feel so far, though eminently readable. Just tackling a book of this size again gives me a good feeling.

consumed:
--pork ribs, baked beans, mcclure potatoes, cranberry salad, garlicky greens, mac n cheese, and rhubarb pie for Amelia's Grandpa's 80th birthday celebration. oh, throw in a Sam Adams Pale Ale and a few glasses of red wine (went surprisingly well with the ribs and pie). had never had straight rhubarb pie before, but it was stunningly good with a touch of citrus from orange zest. (and ice cream, of course)
--twin steer at the east side's own Historic Steer-In. the twin steer is a big mac done right, with 2 smash-style burgers, 3 (buttered & griddled) buns, lettuce, tomato, pickle, cheese, and special sauce. always fresh!

psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 1

2010-03-25T16:29:00.001-04:00

while at the annual minnetrista art show (amelia had 3 photos...one got an award of merit) in my favorite decrepit-manufacturing-town-turned-struggling-state-college-based-municipality (reasons enough for a multi-hour road trip here and here), i got embroiled into a conversation for trading artwork (amelia's that is..not my chicken-scratches) for artwork of former professors, both of whom work in printmaking.

this isn't one of the pieces, but similar in flavor. the repeating, but off-centered border is equally repetitive and off-centered...the visual equivalent of kraut or drone, in a way. i really dig on the simple motifs of the fish, swimming simply in different shapes, as well as the spherical patterns inside the peacock's feathers. kinda feel like you could get lost in their 'groove'.

anyways! drinking some cafe bustelo one day at work, along with posting my history with vinyl at musicalfamilytree, got me wondering, "did i just end up appreciating this strand of music/art on my own? or was i predisposed to this even as a child?" a couple of examples have made me think that i was born with an off-center brain:

bullfrogs & butterflies was an old gaither family effort for kids. until this past Christmas, i hadn't listened to the record in at least 20 years. i thought i wouldn't recognize any of the music, but like the cover image, it had seeped into my brain, imparting a sense of familiarity. the art, though, is what really stuck---some strange amalagamation of hillbillies and fey psychedelia, all prancing around on Witness-lush green backdrops. i mean, who wouldn't want to journey to a land so saturated in color?

Barbapapa was the title character and series name of a french children's book series / animated show. we only had one that i remember, as pictured above. Barbapapa's can take any shape they choose, and live in a sort of Eden, complete with (mostly) nude children. in the book, barbapapa saves animals and people from industrial waste & pollution...via a series of brightly colored pictures of the barbapapa's taking all kinds of forms, and the sludgy-waste rendering the rest of the world dyed in grays, reds, and purples. considering my parents were pretty (standard, in indiana) conservative----strange that we would have this book and read it often. but, they were pretty much one-issue/hot-button voters, and other than that, fairly apolitical. they let me read about anything i wanted (i remember wandering the adult section in 2nd or 3rd grade and getting told where "books for your age" were by a condescending library employee), and i did! so i should thank them for that.

north out of the city

2010-03-11T15:08:00.002-05:00

went to an incredibly pointless "webinar". lost some (hopefully impertinent) parts of my soul, and bulldozed some possible mental real estate. on the plus side, i had some free-writing time whilst speakerphone voices droned & duelled (and called james madison "jimmy madison").

(unedited, unrevised; much gratitude if you read till the end)

North out of the City

In my small, grey, steel car
I sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic,
watching bulldozers scoop maw-fuls
of gravel, shove it into a mound
that does not grow. Detritus rolls
in-between lanes like marbles, resting
in the narrow, brown, spit of a median.

It is the first real day of Spring,
not "Calendar Spring"--
but waking up to birds, shrugging off
your jacket in the first sign of
bright, dew-heavy warmth--and yet
my windows are down.
I'm sucking in exhaust and not even
a tree pierces my sightline of
salt-stained sedans,
overpasses tangled like veins.
The light changes briefly,
bulldozer belches into reverse,
and I slough forward with
less momentum than the gravel
still trickling off the pile.

Fuzzed-out Nigerian 60s funk,
crate-dug from moldy warehouses,
or packed and forgotten in cobwebbed rooms,
property of forgotten uncles, deceased cousins,
older brothers distant and unknown.
The guitars are fractured, sear through
shorted-out speakers. They cut swaths
out my window, above the morass of
muted humanity and chattering machines.
Drums mingle with woodblocks, metallic plinks,
clanks beaten out on spent carburetors,
tire rims, rusted oil-barrels, naked hands,
a flagellating polyrhythm of skin, steel, wood;
woven in sweat.
Voices rise and join, chanting too loud
for the cheap, overseas Sears microphone to handle.
They distort and wrap around each other.
Organs burble and levitate, wobbly till
they cascade back, swallowed by beat.

The light blinks again and I finally move.
A breeze begins, pushing the faint bead
of perspiration back into my brow.
The stereo sends lost shards of art back
into the atmosphere; lone waves
made by men who also rode in cars--
cars that tumbled down mountainsides,
were overtaken by insurrections and captured.
Worse, shot on sight, branded as heretics or
targeted by the terrible solemnity of chance.
Forgotten men existing only in forgotten,
warped grooves, box-bound under leaky roofs.
Ahead, the asphalt lies flat and straight.

don't sleep on this

2010-02-17T13:33:00.004-05:00

i can think of several examples of me sleeping on particularly awesome music suggestions from trustworthy friends. it's almost a skill set at this point. embarrassing examples include record-store-buddy mike giving me a gb-worth of stones bootlegs, and me not sifting through them for 2 years. i mean....i liked the stones---but i totally slept on the fact that they're unequivocally the best rock and roll band of all time. around the same time, i obtained a copy of Stereolab's 2nd album, Transient-Random Noise Bursts with Announcements. whether i was bewildered by the album title (admittedly; i still am), or thrown off by its thin, late 80s/early 90s production (i slept on the first Stone Roses LP for the same reason)...it just didn't register. accelerate to light-speed and fast-forward 3 years...

note: i don't accept for inclusion any post-Some Girls albums

...during this time, my love for kraut (introduced through CAN and Faust) and most things drone (Last Visible Dog-issued stuff, Landing, Fennesz...) had grown immeasurably. i still dabbled in the avant-funk of Emperor Tomato Ketchup...and thus picked back up Transient... for a car trip.

first off, this is a record that needs to be played LOUD. in your car, windows down, so-you-can-feel-it loud. the drums lose some of their thin-ness, and make up for production value with their metronomic exactness. the jangly guitars become thick as tapestries, weaving around singer Lætitia Sadier's honey-deep voice, the oscillating hum of organs & synths, while beneath it all, the drums & bass do not just keep time, they ESTABLISH it. so few fills are present that their playing takes on an architectural aspect, rendering even the poppiest song on the record ("Pack Yr Romantic Mind") monolithic.

elsewhere, the standout, near-20-minute epic "Jenny Ondioline" takes the VU drumbeat and drives it into the ground over repeating vocal verses...till it fades & then returns in almost double-time. there is the syncopated, stabby, anthemic riff of "Crest", which keeps rising in a Moebius-fashion till it circles back upon itself, a locomotive of distortion enveloping the vocal melodies. Though the record ends a song later, "Crest" is the peak and pinnacle of the record's modus operandi; a swirling mass of scratched-up guitars, buzzing organs and synths, and the rhythm section with precision like a 'tussin-ed jackhammer.

wayne, let's hang out.

2010-02-16T15:48:00.006-05:00

just when i didn't think it was possible: this has re-inforced the already omnipresent desire to mail wayne coyne the entire back-catalog of EN! recordings.

via fitzsimmons architects

your u-mommy

2010-02-14T13:34:00.005-05:00

thursday & friday were my days off, and i binged on po'boys. for the uninitiated; take some great french bread, slather it in sauce & creamy coleslaw, then liberally apply the meat & hot sauce of your choice. to cure my po'boy hangover, i made some quinoa with mushrooms, onions, & beets. quinoa is basically the wonder grain---full of protein, iron, and with a nutty taste, yet much less sticky/chewy than brown rice. it is basically the best thing ever.

oh yeah. "umami" is the basic taste you've never heard of: savory. it's the product of a specific amino acid often found in protein-heavy thangs. think meat, broth, mushrooms. MSG also gives you that sweet, sweet umami buzz. anyways, back to quinoa. & this dish which is like the Umami King.

LOVE THIS:

1 c. quinoa
6 oz. mushrooms (portabella are great)
1 carrot
1/2 large onion
3 cloves garlic
2 c. stock (or water)
1 tbsp butter
olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme, beets

Wrap the beets in foil & roast for an hour at 350. then peel em with a spoon & slice.
Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a pot, and cook over medium the garlic, carrot, and most of the onion (reserve some). Rinse the quinoa, add to pot, and cook for 5 minutes, or until it's a little brown. Add in stock, bring to boil, and simmer covered for 10-15 minutes.
Cook sliced mushrooms & remaining onion in pan, w/ olive oil, salt, & thyme.
Stir in 1 tbsp. butter into quinoa, then fluff with a fork. Stir in cooked mushrooms. Serve w/ beets (and greens, if you want) on top of pilaf. Top with hot sauce (Tapatio is a good choice for this dish).

non-shit lo-fi

2010-02-13T15:45:00.003-05:00

never heard this before, but more-of-this-please, 2010-slacker-bands-who-fail-at-using-8-tracks. you can be lo-fi but for the love of God, let us hear everything at somewhat appropriate levels in the mix!

the hummingbirds - blush

via matthew edwards

eat this! sausage pie.

2010-01-21T10:17:00.003-05:00

sausage pie!

what you need:
12 oz mushrooms (de-stemmed; diced)
1 bell pepper (diced)
1 sweet potato (shredded via standing grater)
1/2 onion (diced)
3 or 4 garlic cloves (diced)
12 oz frozen cut spinach (thawed)
1 lb. sausage (i like using hot/spicy)
1 c. shredded cheese (cheddar)
1 egg
1 pie crust

salt, pepper, parmesan (to taste)

what you do:
crumble & cook the sausage till done. or veggie sausage. or you can go meatless.

in another pot, saute the onion & garlic for a few minutes. then add in mushrooms, sweet potato, & bell pepper. season with salt & pepper, cook till tender.

meanwhile, thaw the spinach. (or cook down fresh.) then drain. stir in to veggie pot. then stir in cooked sausage, egg, and cheese. spoon into 9-in. pie crust/plate (yes, it'll all fit in), and top with grated parmesan. cook at 350 for 60 minutes.

let it cool down for 5 minutes, then slice and serve! this is really good leftover, too.

winter eats: 3-bean chili

2009-12-14T14:17:00.003-05:00

Friday night I unsuccessfully tried to con my brother into going out for foods with me. When he failed to answer his phone, my brain said, "Get thee to a grocery," and so I did. Returning with ingredients for some freestyle chili (and Brooklyn lager to boot).

Ingredients:
1 big yellow/sweet onion
4 cloves garlic
1 green pepper
1 jalapeno pepper
1 can kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
1 can black beans
1 can stewed spicy tomatoes (toss in a second can if you've got it)
2 tbsp (or more...) tomato paste
16 oz. chicken broth (or beef/veg/water; more if you like your chili more liquid-y)
1 tbsp spicy brown mustard
4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp cumin
-----------------------
Saute the onion & garlic in the olive oil until it smells so good you can't take it. Then toss in tomatoes (w/ juice), beans (drained + rinsed), and everything else except the peppers. Bring to a boil & simmer for 20 min. Halfway through, toss in the jalapeno & green pepper.

*Note: this wasn't too spicy (I added some sriracha). I think next time I'll double the jalapeno, or switch it up for habaneros or poblanos.

album-alpha, vol. 3

2008-11-25T12:25:00.000-05:00

All the Nations Airports - Archers of Loaf

Overlooked 90's Chapel Hill indie rockers...back when you could count on "indie" to still imply a sense of self. Eric Bachmann's baritone cuts through their increasingly noisy & weird guitar hooks. Their 3rd album proper (and only major label effort) was definitely not any easier to digest, instead showing their growth away from the noise-pop nuggets of debut record Icky Mettle, to something more mature and varied, from the slow guitar build of "Attack of the Killer Bees", the quick attack of "Strangled by the Stereo Wire," and the surprisingly touching-yet-gruff odd ballad, "Chumming the Ocean".

One track: "Chumming the Ocean"

American Don - Don Caballero

This is the natural border, the river separating and conjoining Don Cab and guitarist Ian Williams following band, Battles. There are heavy moments, yes, but not without caveat...like the distorted bass comes in, low-flying, over waltzing guitar harmonics during the opener, "Fire Back About Your New Baby's Sex". All in all though, it's a very cerebral performance, more jazzy and prog-oriented than anything they'd done before, and most definitely the springboard that lead Williams into found Battles, the rightful home for his ever-increasing guitar histrionics.

One track: "The Peter Criss Jazz"

America Eats Its Young - Funkadelic

Ridiculously diverse, overwrought with funk-ified jam sensibilities---I know every Funkadelic record is an exercise in excess. But AEIY is the definition of their excess, overfull with ridiculously ripe material. Opener "You Hit the Nail on the Head" shifts from guitar jam to organ & harmonica boogie to country-funk riffin'. It's all a little too much...though George Clinton might say, "There ain't nothin wrong with that."

One track: "I Call My Baby Pussycat"

album alphabetization, vol. 2

2008-08-05T16:58:00.001-04:00

Akron/Family - Akron/Family

Akron/Family's self-titled debut is an exercise in the electric-pastoral aesthetic, some green, wiry, off-shoot of the freak-folk shrub. Alternately a quiet, one-love-prophesizing and full-on-jangle mid-90's mathy guitar lines. Four dudes being way to involved in their own mental microcosm, but pulling it off with deft chops, not-quite-Disney-level-cheese lyrics, and beards.

One track: "Running Returning"

Akron/Family & Angels of Light - Akron/Family & Angels of Light

Akron/Family gets more dense, more free...and all-in-all a darker take of their still-inbred take on New Weird America. Influenced heavily by backing M. Gira on the other half of this record? Definitely. Begins with his gruff take on "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" and closes with the bleak, dream-cabaret grunge of "Come for My Woman", as disquieting as A/F closer "Raising the Sparks" is joyful.

One track: "Raising the Sparks"

Alien Lanes - Guided by Voices

text here.
Robert Pollard's grunge record? In a distortion sense; they all are. But you'd be hard-pressed to find more gems as fucked-up sounding as "Watch Me Jumpstart" and "Motor Away", which both channel his inner-fist-pumper, as anthemic as "Everlong" buried under a bunch of tangled, dusty 2-in. tape.

One track: "Game of Pricks"

adventures in album alphabetization, vol. 1

2008-07-24T09:14:00.000-04:00

Two days ago I was hopped up on fountain Cokes (which I never drink), free Yat's (courtesy of dropping my business card off---and winning), and the post-work summer high of entering your air-conditioned house after sweating your way home.

I drew the blinds, shed my work duds, and threw on Al Green's double-disc collection The Absolute Best...coincidentally, the first album alphabetically on my computer. Yes, I've ripped most of the CD's I own onto my PC. Helluva lot easier than buying five or six 100-disc changers, which I wouldn't trust to work correctly for more than 6 months, those things being made out of more plastic than Eartha Kitt.

That's when it hit me---I was going to listen to all of the albums, sequentially, by album title. Who knows how long it will take me, but as I've been simultaneously whittling down and building up my collection, this seemed like a good time. Expect reactions and audio clips to all of it...and let's get started:

The Absolute Best - Al Green

I mean, I can't fault you if you choose Marvin, Otis, or Sam. Hell, throw Bill Withers in there, too. But for my money, things just don't get any more sweltering, more downright swingin', than Al Green. This collection, probably the best, absolutely drips soul like honey; the drums, horns, bass-lines, all executed with exceptional swagger-n-sweat. They are feelin' it, and so will you. Perfect summer or winter jams, as long as you're ready to get loose.

One track: Al Green - I'm a Ram

The Advantage - The Advantage

Dudes from Hella playing technically-strong, lithe-rock versions of original Nintendo soundscapes. No synth here---it's all guitar, bass, & drums. It's kitsch at heart, but surprisingly tuneful and, yes, does occasionally rock and make you almost forget you're just a nerd listening to 8-bit covers.

One track: The Advantage - Ducktales, Moon Level

Aftermath (UK) - the Rolling Stones

Take away "Paint it Black", add a couple extended/alternate cuts, and you get Aftermath UK, which begins to show signs of one of the most excellent album runs in music history, beginning a couple years down the road with Beggars Banquet. Here though, gems abound, like the sitar marking "Mother's Little Helper", the mellow vibes anchoring "Under My Thumb" and the prom-ballad/blues-stomp "Out of Time", and the extended-country-drawl of "Going Home". It was only a matter of time till the Stones mastered their amalgamation of American-rhythm-and-blues and riff-based rock-and-roll.

One track: The Rolling Stones - Out of Time (Extended Cut)

Airs Above Your Station - Kinski

Kinski, a Seattle-area instrumental quartet, effectively create their own brand of loosely-wound biker-drone, alternating between riff-heavy slabs of dense, Sabbath-y, rock, and feedback/fuzz-laden atmospheric stretches. It's the riff that is more effective on Airs Above Your Station, particularly on the moody, stoner-rock stretches of "Steve's Basement" and the reverbed-out "Semaphore". Their inability to remain "free" for long puts a cap on otherwise acceptable drone stretches, and perhaps its their technically heavy/effects-laden riffs -- catchy, no doubt -- that leave you wanting the more structured, sonically-interesting parts of the record, like the kraut-y, Sonic Youth-esque dissonant pounding of "Rhode Island Freakout".

One track: Kinski - Rhode Island Freakout

Monday Morning Comb-Over v.2

2008-03-10T15:41:00.000-04:00

After narrowly avoiding the swath of record snows, but not the accompanying freezing temperatures, it's nice to see the sun out today.

Watching!

Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971 (Criterion re-release; 2007)

The consummate road movie in that the only vital character in this cult classic recently re-issued on DVD is the road itself. Dennis Wilson and James Taylor star in two sparsely-worded roles (even in comparison to the rest of the film itself; which is almost succinct to a fault), car-heads who head across the America in a primer-only 55 Chevy, picking up a hitch-hiking girl along the way, and eventually agreeing to race a middle-aged wandered in a brand new GTO. The roar of the engine and the expanse of the American West, Plains, and South, are the main subjects here though; as well as a stern sense of existentialism, which indeed borders on nihilism. Were it not for the girl, nothing would separate man from machine, and she only succeeds occasionally; flitting back and forth between the gear-heads and the drugged-up GTO, her broadly-painted version of anti-intellectualism is defined in her exit on the back of a stranger's motorcycle. Not going where the wind takes her, just back to the road.

Spies Like Us, 1985

Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd cash in on another 80's comedy romp that's mostly fluff and/or multi-national circumstantial pomp. Less cheap laughs (despite more acting effort!) than Fletch, but not without its merits, which are more clearly revealed to the viewer who imbibes; such as Chase's less-than-girly grenade toss to defeat some fur-wearing Russkies. Cameos from Bob Hope and...B.B. King are negligible highlights. The best scene can be summed up in one grand screenshot:

Listening!

Invisible Pyramid Elegy Box, Various Artists (6xCD; Last Visible Dog, 2005)

Disc Three (tracks by UP-TIGHT, Flies Inside the Sun, Uton, mudboy, and Steven R. Smith) embraces a grimy, distorted haze of atmospheric drone. UP-TIGHT throws Dirty and Nevermind into a meat grinder, run it through a Big Muff, and manage to out-grunge grunge. F.I.t.S. seem more electronic, and like their namesake buzz and burble through who-knows-what-kind of processing. Uton and mudboy calm the waters somewhat, mudboy's nyquil of choice being his cadre of altered organ sounds, evoking a wordless Northeastern raconteur who slowly trails off into a stare.

Monday Afternoon Comb-Over

2008-03-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

A new feature? Who knew! Monday Afternoon Comb-Over is just a smattering of things; what I've been reading; listening to; and various links that may or may not warrant your attention.

Reading!

Don Delillo's Underworld - Thus far (500+ pages in); a highly enjoyable, post-modern mishmash that begins with a breathless take on the Shot Heard 'Round the World (the baseball game; not archduke assassination). From here, it spreads its wings around 4 decades of American life, and numerous character sets with varied intersections. A handwringing look at what lies beneath the veneer of America-after-the-bomb.

Listening!

Flying Saucer Attack's Mirror - Fingerpicked folk, My Bloody Valentine-esque guitar-noise-washouts, and stark machine-Kraut rhythms melt together seamlessly on 2000's Mirror. "Suncatcher" is a sparse and pastoral highlight, while "Islands" follows with hypnotic static oscillations that are folded into the understated groove of a very liquid-y bass-line and metronomic beat. Less harsh than New Lands, but just as far out into the cosmos.

Noticing!

New Doomsday Seed Vault Opens - Picture at the top is probably the most interesting thing here---except for the fact that...how's anybody gonna get in that thing? And when they do, they'll only need to walk a thousand miles south to plant. Or maybe we'll have floating-supersonic-segueways by then.
Family Guy spoofs Alien - Not sure why this is so funny, but it has spawned a new buzzword in my small circle of friends..."Zoop!"
Preliminary Terrastock 7 schedule is now up...and I received my 4-day ticket late last week. Particularly excited to see (for the first time) Oneida, Bardo Pond, Jack Rose, and Pelt.

Books 'n Books: Don DeLillo's Libra

2008-02-06T15:20:00.000-05:00

Libra is a take on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, a gratuitous weaving of fact and fiction, of characters imagined and real. As a whole, the work is seamless, creating out of Oswald an intricate tapestry of a man, episodic in its treatment of his life as the penultimate example of coincidence colliding with cause-and-effect, the divine intervention of fate into the nature-vs.-nurture argument.

Reputedly, DeLillo consumed the entire Warren Report as part of the process of the novel's creation, a massive tome that aided his construction of Oswald's literary character, which is as diverse as any real-life man's should be; alternatively pensive, kind, abusive, loquacious, silent, fatherly, asexual, and so on forever. Particularly effective in the novel is DeLillo's portrayal of Oswald's time in Russia, which, in the book, seems to be the true turning point for his character, the paranoia which plagues him from childhood on finally grasping onto true holds upon his return to America.

Once in America, Oswald's perceptions of Russia bend, and after constant surveillance and interference in his life by the FBI and CIA, he seems to forget why he left (the boring routine of work and life, a stability which he has never known), and begins to contemplate a return to Russia, or, at the very least, a return to Marxism by way of Cuba. Despite his efforts (letters written on behalf of his Russian wife and child; attempts to gain entry to Cuba through Mexico), he fails miserably, not even seeming to scratch the vast wall of bureaucracy that stands in both the USSR and USA.

During this extended sequence of alienization from all he knows (losing jobs, breaking contact with his mother, living alone in boarding houses), he becomes enveloped in a web of conspiracy that, unbeknownst to him, has already created his place in history: the one who would take the fall for the Kennedy assassination attempt. His attempts to deny this place are half-hearted at best (in the vein of most of his actions directed towards anything; job-keeping, deciding which system he wants to live in, even his own muted acceptance of clownish-father-figure David Ferrie's lazed sexual assault); and indeed, are softened by his increasing desire to have a name, and be known for it.

After a breakneck, episodic vision of the assassination sequence, DeLillo places you in the cell with Oswald, who has more peace of mind here than anywhere else throughout his life. Even after he is shot by Ruby (again; a club-owner, in serious debt, caught up in a sequence of events over his head) his mind is clear as Russia seen from a U-2, which is his final vision. In the closing scene we see his mother, mourning, her only solace that her son will be known by name, a strangely morbid fascination that hearkens back to the creation of Oswald the man.

Overall, a compelling blend of fiction and reality, far different in the singular, crushing eventuality of its vision than its closest cultural counterpart, Oliver Stone's louder, multi-conspiratorial JFK.

iDaDa First Friday Review

2008-02-05T15:47:00.000-05:00

Friday saw my girlfriend and I exploring what the galleries in Fountain Square had to offer. The display in Big Car was probably the best, a collection of work by a Herron student arranged like a one-room house, complete with bed, end table + rotary phone, deer skull, actual deer head (with an eyepatch), and most impressive, a mantle and fireplace guard.

The pieces themselves were mostly in brown tones, heavy with skulls, Old West-overtures, and an all-encompassing sense of slow, progressive death. My only minor quibbles were a couple pieces that didn't seem to jibe with the rest; a skater-dude print complete with 'Brutal' hat, and a second piece of animals holding hands that was also dominated by a blue hue.

Downstairs in the Alchemy space, there was my favorite piece of the night, a waxy assembled piece with a lit candle (snuffed soon after observation) in front of an aged photograph. Seemed to convey a sense of palpable history, all dominated by a gray-green hue closest to that of aged bronze patina.

Upstairs, the lure of audible drone brought me into a space with some holographic digital canvas prints, and a large, cycling piece of video art on the wall, all of it with a post-apocalyptic landfill feel. While the drone added to the atmosphere, I can't say it was very great stuff. Low rumbles with high synth-y strings floating above, the sounds setting an inoffensively dark tone for the room, but because of its seemingly circular structure...it never went anywhere. Although in defense of the music choice---the video art was on a loop, so it would make sense for the music behind the piece to remain ambiently circular.

Winter Eats: Red Lentils

2008-01-28T13:53:00.000-05:00

Let's be honest: I'm poor. And since I don't qualify for the Earned Income Credit until I'm 25 (OK, so legal adulthood, voting, porn, smoke, & war at 18; booze at 21; rental cars and EIC at 25? Seriously, give it up for inane, arbitrary bureaucracy.), I gotta save that cheese any and every way I can. There aren't too many dishes I can take to work every day of the week and

Know it's costing me less than 25¢ a meal.

Enjoy it 5 days in a row.

Know it's not going to get evil in the fridge, causing uncomfortable (albeit; paid) breaks regularly throughout a given afternoon.

and

Get a complete vegetarian protein by combining with rice.

Ingredients:
1 c. red lentils (you can use any color, really, i just prefer the taste/texture of red)
3-4 tbsp. oil/margarine
1 lg. onion (diced)
5 to 10 cloves garlic (minced; depends how much garlic you like, I usually go with 7.)
2 tbsp. Lentil Daal seasoning (you can buy this pre-mixed/packaged for really cheap; or substitute your own mixture of cumin, coriander, garam masala, chili powder, ginger...etc.)
1 can diced tomatoes (or, 3-4 fresh 'uns, diced. but don't buy 'em in winter; who knows how many time zones/continental divides/civil wars they had to travel across.)
5-6 c. water

Preparation:
Rinse and then soak your lentils for 1 hr., picking out any impurities. (You don't have to soak them, but it'll help your digestion if you're not in tune with legumes.) Drain (anal chefs may wish to rinse again).

Heat 2 tbsp. oil in a pot, then cook onions for a few minutes. Next, add the spices and garlic, letting it all cook for another minute or so. Then, add in your tomatoes, lentils, and water. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add final tbsp. of oil at the end to give it that nice sheen.

Finish:
If you like you can mash it a bit, making the texture more more thick-soup like. Some fresh cilantro goes good on top as a contrast, and don't forget rice or naan as a base. Let it cool before you refrigerate, and the next day it'll thicken; should keep for at least a week.

Once again, spring for some cilantro and presentation on this one is almost too easy. With the spices, and the cooking time fading the red lentils, the dish takes on a golden, glossy hue. As for the the Goat's Head Soup deconstruction, expect that soon. Had to go veg for a day. Another day, another daal--er?

Winter Eats: Colcannon

2008-01-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

Monday night was cold and blustery--luckily, I'd just been to Saraga, where I procured, among other things, a bag of potatoes and a bundle of kale. Earlier in the day, I'd been perusing a cookbook at my girlfriend's house and jotted down the recipe for a traditional Irish dish, colcannon, the hearty, hairy uncle of bubble 'n squeak (which, unfortunately, I've never tried at my Irish pub of choice--Louisville's Irish Rover).

Whereas bubble 'n squeak is the high-voiced little cousin who'll never stop bothering you to play foosball in the moldy basement, colcannon looked to be every bit the hale, stocky uncle, glasses in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, who slaps you on the back every time he tells a joke. And admittedly, his material doesn't change much from year-to-year, but that's just part of the charm. Much like colcannon, in fact, whose main ingredients remain much the same, generation after generation. In this case...also not a bad thing. The recipe follows:

Ingredients:
2 lbs potatoes (cut into even pieces)
8 oz. curly kale or green cabbage (shredded)
2 scallions (chopped) [I used a small yellow onion and it worked beautifully.]
Butter (to taste)
Nutmeg, Salt, Pepper (to taste)
4 eggs
3 oz. aged cheese (grated)

Preparation:
Boil potatoes (water level should just cover the 'taters; till tender), drain, and mash well (with a bit of milk and butter). [I suppose you could use instant, if you can justify using instant potatoes in a dish with a name like "Colcannon". I mean, c'mon, potatoes are the dish. Man up and get peelin'.]

Lightly cook kale until tender but crisp (a bit of olive oil will help with this). Heat oven to 375°. Drain the kale, and mix with the potatoes, onions, butter (I used 2 tbsp.), nutmeg (a healthy amount, 2 or 3 tsp.), and salt and pepper.

Spoon into a lightly buttered dish, and make four hollows with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg into each hollow, and season accordingly. Bake 12 min. (eggs will be a bit runny; if you want them set, leave it in for 20 or so).

Finish:
Serve with grated cheese (and if you're feeling decadent, some crumbled bacon or sausage makes it ideal).

This was pretty much perfect, and with minimal effort on my part, even looked rather presentable (for what it is; forest-green kale, golden mashed potatoes, four smiling eggs) in the dish. Leftover it was magnificent for breakfast or lunch, and I strongly suspect it would serve as a healthy cure or base for a bender.

Next time: An extended look at the perenially underrated Stones' record Goat's Head Soup, for better or for worse, always known as "the record after Exile."

Introduction

2008-01-24T15:30:00.000-05:00

I'm Drew. I'm 24, live in Indianapolis, have an awesome girlfriend, and work as an office assistant in a non-public part of the library. I have a BA in English/Creative Writing from Ball State University. I believe in good beer (particularly porters & stouts), the psychedelia/drone movement, the DIY aesthetic, eating ribs in Memphis, sock hats, wooden floors, and keeping the thermostat low. I play rock and roll as part of Everything, Now!; have been wearing the same black pocket tee's for years; and once lived in a house affectionately named "Transpanther".

I'll be writing about music [new & old]; cooking; creative endeavours; and fanciful whims.

This sums it up pretty well:

Voice got Soil

Down in the stomach pit of Georgia,
the Valdosta scrub pine stands chant

hobo
chang
ba

the iron-red Beefheart mantra.

swamp scallops sing bass below
the dirty tremble of Drumbo,
while razor-eyed herons stand-
statue in the Cypress funk.

an owl-horn solo bellows out
the A-frame floating cabin,
Zoot Horn Rollo laying boat-up
in a stew-pot of blood-shrimp, gin—

look!—the Captain done stole the soul
right out the rudder, the lamps out
the duck-green gloom lagoon,
spines zippered out the trout.

the mask of riverbed creeklife
saw ‘im; that diamond fish-head
smiling rotten, dirt-lipped, him
singing on vine-encrusted shoal,

him hop stone-to-stone,
note-to-note-to-bone, a minstrel
pluck sprung out the gutof a dusky-throated saxophone.