All Wrong

Tonight, I was cooking dinner; Grilled pork chops, bulgar wheat, and oven-roasted baby carrots. Now, when I’m roasting stuff, I often use a heavy frying pan. I own a number of very good such pans, and they go easily from stovetop to oven. Most of my frying pans have nice, stay-cool handles. No matter how […]

Tonight, I was cooking dinner; Grilled pork chops, bulgar wheat, and oven-roasted baby carrots.

Now, when I’m roasting stuff, I often use a heavy frying pan. I own a number of very good such pans, and they go easily from stovetop to oven.

Most of my frying pans have nice, stay-cool handles. No matter how hot the pan gets, the handle stays touchable. At least, that works when you’re on the stove top.

I have trouble learning some things though. Little things, like fire burns.

So of course when my carrots came out of the oven, I plated them nicely, and then turned to clean up, picking up my frying pan to move it toward the sink.

The handle – like the rest of the pan, and the carrots that were in it, and the inside of the oven – was something like 375°F. And of course I don’t have the sense to just drop a hot pan, but instead, tend to set it down carefully (respect for my cooking gear runs deep; much deeper, evidently, than self-preservation or pain threshold.

You’d think eventually I’d learn, right? Well, ok, maybe not. Not if you know me.

There’s really nothing like the sound of skin sizzling, is there?


After plunging my hand into icewater, I took a look and found a handful of blisters in a palm similar in color to the pork I’d just taken off the grill. Guess I don’t have quite the calluses I used to.

This I thought, is going to smart a bit.

I finished my dinner, and then washed down a double handfull of vicodin with a Duval. And then wrapped my hand in ice and figured, you know, what goes well with vicodin?

Morphine.


She had black hair like ravens crawling over her shoulders
All the way down
She had a smile that swerved
She had a smile that curved
She had a smile that swerved all over the road
It’s all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong
She had a way of making people feel good to be around her
As it should be
It’s all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong (x2)
All wrong
And when she laughs I travel back in time
Something flips the switch and I collapse inside
It’s all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong (x2)
All wrong


I don’t do favorites lists the way I once did.

I used to have lists; favorite albums, favorite bands, favorite songs. Favorite concerts. They’d be ordered (if fluid), and they’d be conditional (favorite songs to have sex to, favorite driving albums).

I had them ordered and ranked, and at one point even sorted my Lps by favoritness, rather than alphabetical.

It’s all way too much work for me now; and in any case it’s generally too fluid to mean anything beyond right now.

There are exceptions. I can pick a favorite single album; I have a list (un-ranked, but consistant) of my five favorite jazz albums. So when one of my daughters asked me the other day, what’s your favorite band, instead of my usual I don’t have a favorite (an answer they hate), I found I had one.

Morphine.

I don’t need more on the list than that; If I think about it I start feeling like Dick and Barry from High Fidelity. But there’s that one.

Wicked Tinkers

Ok, now we done with our once-a-year foray into irishness? Alright then. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpUdpZpVX3w&hl=en]

Ok, now we done with our once-a-year foray into irishness?

Alright then.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpUdpZpVX3w&hl=en]

The Bad Plus

I meant to post this two weeks ago and as usual, the sheer load of stuff I need to do got in the way. I’m in the final two weeks of getting a project out and… well, nevermind, I don’t wanna talk about work. Let’s just say, busy with a side of busy. Anyway, I’m […]

I meant to post this two weeks ago and as usual, the sheer load of stuff I need to do got in the way. I’m in the final two weeks of getting a project out and… well, nevermind, I don’t wanna talk about work. Let’s just say, busy with a side of busy.

Anyway, I’m here to talk about music.

My current big band obssion is The Bad Plus.

I blogged about them not long ago; but since then I’ve seen them play live since.

I discovered this band sort of by accident; my friend Chris (also known as Papa by my kids, Christo von Paisley back in the Jailbait Babysitters days), and as Papa Christo by a whole lot of our friends, mixing the two nicknames together) handed me These are the Vistas one day a couple years ago, saying, you like jazz, you should check these guys out. , and I liked them instantly.

If you have not listened to them, it’s impossible to convey in one or two song samples, and it’s difficult to describe. They are a basic jazz piano trio (piano, stand up bass, drums). However, they have a way of playing with a rock sensibility, even while very much being a jazz group. They are not really fusion, certainly not what I think of as fusion (chick corea, john mclaughlin, herbie hancock, joe zawinul). Sonically, they’re pure jazz. Yet they manage to feel more purely like a fusion than any of those bands did, at least back in fusion’s heyday in the 70s and 80s; no electric instruments, no funk bass, no distortion, but instead the rock coming from driving beats and a rock-infused melodic sense.

They play covers from Bacharach to Rush, Tears for Fears to Queen, Interpol to Black Sabbath. Yet it’s their originals I find most inspired (and you’ll find two examples below); these guys are all three accomplished composers, with distinctly different styles.

A few months ago, when I saw Richard Thompson play in Saratoga, CA, I noticed The Bad Plus listed on a bill of upcoming acts. So I was watching for tickets to go on sale.

When then did, I was nearly first in virtual line, snapping up front row seats in what has to be one of the south bay’s best small venues, the Villa Montalvo carriage house theater.

I wasn’t sure who would be going wth me, but I picked up three tickets; Chris, I was sure, would want one, but Kenny or one of my other jazz musician friends would be interested; a good seat is almost always easy to give away.

Cut to a month ago, when I posted this entry; my nine-year-old daughter Ruby, who’d always responded stringly to jazz (from the time she was an infant, if I had jazz on, she calm down and listen), developed an un-expected love for The Bad Plus.

She impressed the hell out of me. TBP are, to say the least, somewhat challenging; they play weird songs, weird time signatures, bizarre improvisational sections. They’re not user friendly jazz. Ruby got them, and loved them. She kept seeking them out in my iPod, asked me to load them onto hers. When I told her I had an extra ticket, she enthusiastically said yet, I want to go!

When the night of the show came, Ruby was excited to the point of speechlessness. Se’s funny like that, her sister gets twitchy and talks non-stop when excited, chatters so fast you wonder when she has time to breathe. Not Ruby; she goes near-catatonic. Like so much sensory input sends her into a fugue state. That’s how they were when we were seeing Wicked; Olivia vibrating and ruby absolutely still, wide-eyed and stone faced. Both in a state of rapture, but with polar opposite appearances.

Read more “The Bad Plus”

Gonna be a long night

Man, I love this song. I heard it last night on The Shield: Heard that you are new in town Someone said you party down Well, later I’ll be comin’ round We’ll rack ’em up and suck ’em down Don’t call your mother – don’t call your priest Don’t call your doctor – call the […]

Man, I love this song. I heard it last night on The Shield:

Heard that you are new in town
Someone said you party down
Well, later I’ll be comin’ round
We’ll rack ’em up and suck ’em down

Don’t call your mother – don’t call your priest
Don’t call your doctor – call the police
You bring the razor blade – I’ll bring the speed
Take off your coat – it’s gonna be a long night

There’ll be no 2nd chance for you
Tomorrow you’ll be black and blue
Show your friends your new tattoo
911 won’t help you, fool

You’re gonna suffer – you’re gonna bleed
I’ve heard it all before – you will concede
I’m takin’ everything – you’re goin’ down
Lock up the doors – it’s gonna be a long night

It’s gonna be a long night – it’s gonna be a catfight
It’s gonna be a gang-bang

(link to track removed)

Bad+

I got in the car this morning to drive my 9 year old daughter, Ruby, to school. I jacked my iPhone into the stereo and handed it to her as I pulled out of the driveway. Pick something, I said. She spent several minutes scrolling around through my collection and chose something. She chose this. […]

I got in the car this morning to drive my 9 year old daughter, Ruby, to school.

I jacked my iPhone into the stereo and handed it to her as I pulled out of the driveway. Pick something, I said.

She spent several minutes scrolling around through my collection and chose something.

She chose this.

I listened for a moment to the quiet opening, puzzled.

What is this? I asked her.

The Bad Plus, she answered.

You like this?

Yeah, we played it last time you drove to school.

My little girl. This is added on to her taste that already ranges from High School Musical to the Beach Boys to Garbage. Eclectic, one might say.

irresistable orbit

let’s take a trip together headlong into the irresistable orbit breathe in the cold black space with the glistening edges let’s take a trip me and you let’s go the scenic route get to finally get to finally get to finally get to know eachother just to be alone with you just to be alone […]

let’s take a trip together
headlong into the irresistable orbit
breathe in the cold black space
with the glistening edges
let’s take a trip
me and you
let’s go the scenic route
get to finally get to finally get to finally
get to know eachother
just to be alone with you
just to be alone
just to be alone with me

somewhere there’s no distractive
breeze of information
leaking through the windows
dripping from the trees
somewhere there’s no earthquakes
no other people’s anxious questions
no nervous wrecks
going down
no nervous wrecks
going down

let’s take a trip together
headlong into the irresistable orbit

(Morphine)

Play It

Scream in the Dark

There was a time, a lifetime or two ago, when I used to spend a lot of time in dark clubs and sleazy bars, listening to bands give it all up for audiences that only sometimes got it. Some of these bands today are names you know; CDs you have in your collection, if sometimes […]

There was a time, a lifetime or two ago, when I used to spend a lot of time in dark clubs and sleazy bars, listening to bands give it all up for audiences that only sometimes got it.

Some of these bands today are names you know; CDs you have in your collection, if sometimes under different names than I knew them.

I used to roadie – hump amps, drive gear to gigs, sometimes help sound guys. I tried and tried to play, but found my musical gifts tended to the listening and lifting, not the creation.

Of all the bands I loved, one above all stood out. They were my friends, people I know and love still today. But before they were my friends, they were one of the greatest live bands I’ve ever seen.

Dot 3, they were called, a name I always thought had to do with the elipsis (the final dot on the end, meaning, what comes after). Years later, I found out the origin was more mundane; that there was a can of break fluid on the windowsill in the room where the practiced, and they kept looking at DOT 3 on the label and took a liking to the name.

They called themselves “Tribal Funk”; I to describe them as ‘one part old XTC (‘white music’ era), one part new King Crimson (‘discipline’ era), and one part James Brown. This didn’t really cover it, but it gives one a very vague idea.

This was a band that were doing that thrash-funk thing before Primus or the Limbomaniacs or the Chili Peppers did it; in fact they inspired all three of those bands. Primus opened for them all the time, as did the RHCP.

Dot 3 worked that same territory, yet there was something more intensely primal in what they did.

The night I first saw them, the drummer played a stange, stand-up drum kit, pounding and whipping his head, dancing as he played. The singer played Chapman Stick. They had a horn section – something none of the bands playing the san jose scene at the time had.

They opened the show with two of them – Mark, the bass/stick player and lead singer, and Ken (yes, that Ken, my dear friend still) pounding out complex drum parts while wearing empty budweiser cartons on their heads. The rest of them band entered from the back of the club – also in beer cartons – playing other drum parts on various small portable drums.

I knew from the first tune I’d love this band; I just didn’t know how much.

As with so many brilliant local bands, they never really left a record of what they were. The few studio recordings never sounded like them; and the bizarre, hard-to-classify style made them generally un-interesting to record companies. They were a band without a pretty front man, without a hit song, without a hook record labels would understand. Yet, they were ahead of a great wave of funk-rock bands to come, and with only some luck and timing, they might have been a band we’d all know of.

Such is the story of so many brilliant bands.

What little record we have is rough, recorded live, with hand-held video cameras. It doesn’t really capture it; you can’t hear the collective scream of an entire audience yelling the words, you can’t catch a room throbbing with the beat on hot, sweaty nights. You can’t get the primal beat everything they did was based on. You can’t hear the incredibly energy, the incredible talent.

I remember though, and so, if you’re lucky enough ever to have seen them, do you.

This is a clip made by my friend Eric Predoehl, a long time ago. I keep begging for more; I know he has it. But this one, for all the rough sound and un-edited form, reminds me of a band that made a permenent impression on me, both musically and personally.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6_kWaxw6rc&rel=1]

Band Crush

I love finding a new band; or at least, a band that’s new to me. I love that goofy NRE that comes from finding something I’m so overwhelmingly into that it’s all I want. It’s like a crush – a band crush. You know what I mean. The first time you heard a band that […]

I love finding a new band; or at least, a band that’s new to me. I love that goofy NRE that comes from finding something I’m so overwhelmingly into that it’s all I want.

It’s like a crush – a band crush.

You know what I mean. The first time you heard a band that lit you up like a bong-hit. I don’t care who it is – beatles or spice girls, genesis or david cassidy, verve or louis prima, coltrane or monk or bb king or the bee gees.

What matters is that moment of discovery-rapture when you realize you just found the greatest music ever.

And it doesn’t matter if it lasts; it could be over tomorrow or it could be the band whose t-shirt you want to be buried in. It just matters how exciting it is when you put on that third or fouth song, or play that album for the second time straight through, when you realize you’ve found something that matters.

Now, sometimes that’s a brand new band. I felt that way when I first saw a local band called Dot3, when I knew after ten minutes that I had a new favorite band.

But it can be something really old. When I put on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue I realized I’d found not just an artist and an album that would change my life, I knew I’d really found a genre that would define my listening for a long time. I went nuts when I bought a Funakdelic collection a few years ago; I’d heard Parliament and lots of other funk artists, but Funkadelic were different, and I wanted nothing else for a month. I’d just missed hearing them, for all the other funk albums I owned.

Lately, inspired by Spiritualized, I’ve been poking around in the wide swath of bands loosely grouped under the sobriquet ‘shoegaze‘. Now, all sorts of bands get lumped in with this (as happens with lables like emo, or a generation ago, punk or new wave) that I wouldn’t even remotely describe as such; but then, I also can’t really define what is really shoegaze, and what of that, I actually like.

But I’ve used it as a jumping point into all sorts of interesting bands; some bands I knew a bit, some I know of by name only, and some wholly new to me. I found gems – true gems – like Swervedriver, and some bands that are generally loved that I struggle with (my bloody valentine – love the music, hate the singing), and a lot of bands that are loosely grouped only by things like “Listeners also bought” lists on iTunes or someone’s “essentials” lists. Bands like BMRC, for example, who are not so much shoegaze but turn up along with said bands now and then.

One band whose name I’ve always heard (both in connection to shoegaze and otherwise) but never paied attention to is the subject of my current ‘band crush’; Dinosaur Jr.

Sure, I’d heard their name; they get some airplay on alternarock stations, and had a cover of the Cure’s ‘just like heaven’ which was a minor hit locally a while back (I didn’t care for it, and still don’t).

But I was looking at an ‘also bought’ list on iTunes earlier this week and said, oh, right, that band, I can’t remember what they sound like. I need to check them out.

This would be what they sound like, for the few of you who didn’t know:

Turnip Farm

Forget It

(play these fucking loud, particularly the first, Turnip Farm)

I sampled three songs, bought an album (You’re Living All Over Me), and played it three times. Halfway through the second play, I realized I needed a second album.

By the next day, I’d bought eight albums – the dangers of one-click purchase. And as those of you who have me on various IM buddy lists will know from my ‘status’, I’ve had them playing pretty much without a break ever since.

The amount I love this band defies my ability to describe. I don’t even like the singer’s voice that much; I sort of have to get past it. But the guitar playing is what gets me, and it gets me so much I never want to stop hearing them.

J. Mascis pretty much could have come to me and said, dude (cause he’s address me as dude, you know he would), what is your absolute favorite guitar tone? And I would have described it in words like fuzz, growl, dirty, crunch, distortion, howl. When I used to play, that’s what I was always trying to get, with my limited equipment (a tiny amp that sounded like a pocket-sized marshall stack), and even more minimal skill. It’s the (musical) sound I love best. But I don’t wanna hear it in heavy metal bands; I wanna hear it in music that’s otherwise more sophisticated, more melodic. The contrast is what makes it work, as when Richard Lloyd howls and screams behind Matthew Sweet’s beautiful, heartfelt songs of misery.

My best description of them is one part Neil Young, one part Foo Fighters, one part Replacements. Though I’m missing some fourth part somehow, I can’t quite put a finger on it. Whatever it is, though, to me, it’s the shit.

This is one of those bands where my friends say, wait, how did you not know this band already. My best defense is not listening to much radio anymore. I’ve commuted on a motorcycle for years, and now, even when I commute in a car, I have only a three mile commute. So it’s been fifteen years or more since I regularly listened to radio, meaning here and there, great bands have whipped by me un-noticed. I’m ok with that; I now get to discover them as if they were really brand spankin’ new, AND I get to find them when they have whole catalogs for me to go buy.

I dunno how long I’ll be in this phase. Might be over my monday. Or I might be driving everyone in the car nuts next week as we drive back from Southern CA. But however long, I sure as hell have me a new Favorite Band for the moment.

Dropkick

Somehow I managed to miss Dropkick Murphys until about twelve hours ago. I’m now making up for lost time. Don’t wait for Burns Night for bagpipes – Listen: Warrior’s Code (I suspect Ray is now thinking, I told you so)

Somehow I managed to miss Dropkick Murphys until about twelve hours ago. I’m now making up for lost time.

Don’t wait for Burns Night for bagpipes – Listen: Warrior’s Code

(I suspect Ray is now thinking, I told you so)