Band Crush

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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.

…about your dongle.

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On my voice mail today – a girl named Dassie left this: “…the sticker on your dongle is incorrect.” After that, I could not refrain from giggling.

On my voice mail today – a girl named Dassie left this:

“…the sticker on your dongle is incorrect.”

After that, I could not refrain from giggling.

bitter, dark night

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I think I’ve been trying to get something written for at least two week. Even testing the new beta version of ecto3, I wasn’t able to manage anything more than test test, test. It has been, to say the least, nuts. There have been school plays (and much applause), trick-or-treating with teenage girls (the smell […]

I think I’ve been trying to get something written for at least two week. Even testing the new beta version of ecto3, I wasn’t able to manage anything more than test test, test.

It has been, to say the least, nuts.

There have been school plays (and much applause), trick-or-treating with teenage girls (the smell of girls and candy in my truck), hockey games (the sharks lost, but I finally got a sharks jersey), award ceremonies at the county department of education (who, it turns out, have quite the collection of art, one piece of which is now by my daughter). There have been friends in need, emergency house repairs, and kids games that don’t work on Leopard.

And that’s not to mention work.

Work, though; well, one might touch wood (Shhh! no giggling!) and say things are getting better. Or at least getting ready to get better.

We finally got another guy in my group, which we desperately needed – and this new guy’s lookin’ like a rock star, one of those gifted CAD engineers who loves this kind of work, AND has the technical chops. And we have a new director, and for the first time since I reported to Jeff (Ray knows what this means), we have a top manager who fucking gets it. He knows already who’s carrying the load (my team) and who’s not (that other team who sit next to my team, and no, if you’re reading this, I don’t mean you. Unless it’s YOU in which case, yeah I do).

This is why I try not to tell co workers I blog. One of them asked me about a Bukowski quote in my sig bar: “Writing chooses you, you don’t choose it.” And he asked me if I’m a writer, and what I write. “Dark, violent noir” is what I said, because I didn’t want to mention blogging at a group lunch, and I didn’t want to say “erotica featuring drugs and depravity” which is nearer the mark.

But possible improvement aside, we’re still bailing as fast as we can to slow the boat sinking. Which doesn’t help one’s creativity or general well-being.

My head’s been full of snippets of writing lately. I can feel something trying to get out. Snippets of dialog I can’t quite seem to bring from brain to keyboard. Characters who walk on stage and are gone again before I know who they are.


I sat late last night in a bar, watching a pretty young woman talking to thebarman. She wants him, I thought, seeing it in the hair-touching, the posture. I puzzled over their story. Was she playing so hard for him, doing her overt mating dance? Or was I seeing a couple in love already, her body showing every recent touch of his hands.

I wondered as I sipped strong black coffee and listened to people next to me tell boastful stories. I began to tell myself a story about them, pieced together without words, from glances and smiles and almost-touches. I entertained myself until last call and after, until closing time.

I overheard the handsome young barman then, as I picked up my coat and hat. He was saying “…my fiancée…” to other late-night patrons, with an open-handed sweep in her direction.

Young love, I thought. Romance, and possibility, everything life has laid before them like a shining path.

“Fuck the both of you,” I thought, and walked out into a bitter, dark night.

The setting above was true, a pretty girl who looked like Fred from the teevee show Angel, playing with her hair as she talked to a friend of mine who tends bar. The word fiancée was indeed used later, when he introduced her, and I loved her instantly when she said hello. She had a little betty boop voice that made want to hear her say daddy.

But the slice on monolog was a character who started speaking in my head as I drove home. I don’t know who he was or why the young lovers inspired his wrath; but I wanted to find out. I wanted to know the rest of his story.

It wasn’t there. Just what you see, more or less as I heard his voice say it at 1:30 am last night on a freeway under dark, clear, starry skies. His story was lost, like someone you meet in an airport lounge and listen to for twenty minutes, while you await flights to different ends of the world. Like someone you meet and wonder about after.

I need to find a character again who speaks to me long enough that I know him, or her; that I can let them tell mea a story. It’s been far too long since that’s happened, but I can almost feel it, almost hear it.

And time, of course, to let them speak when they arrive. Because they will not wait. They will not hear me say, later, tell me later.

Dropkick

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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)

Big Al

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What kind of (Deadwood) Cocksucker are you?created with QuizFarm.com You scored as Al Swearengen You have carved out your powerbase from the mud under your feet and you’ll be damned if some cocksucker is going to take it. You know how to play the fancy politician’s games, but you know how to play things the […]

What kind of (Deadwood) Cocksucker are you?
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Al Swearengen

You have carved out your powerbase from the mud under your feet and you’ll be damned if some cocksucker is going to take it. You know how to play the fancy politician’s games, but you know how to play things the frontier way too. If that means getting blood on your hands, so be it. (Al Swearengen is played by Ian McShane)

Al Swearengen
88%

Alma Garret
69%

Cy Tolliver
69%

Trixie
63%

Doc Cochran
56%

Calamity Jane
56%

Seth Bullock
50%

Joanie Stubbs
38%

Mr Wu
31%

E. B. Farnum
25%

On my first try I was Seth Bullock. I like this result better. In reality I’m somewhere in between.

I am, actually, distantly related to the real life Al Swearengen – no lie.

(thx to my One True Love, miz Chelsea Summers for the quiz.)

Dad Points on Ice

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There are certain things a man does for no other reason than to win the approval of women. This can include gifts, certainly. But it can be as simple as lawn-mowing, or putting the seat down, or getting one’s fucking feet off the table. Little else, though, has quite the innocent payoff of pleasing adolescent […]

There are certain things a man does for no other reason than to win the approval of women.

This can include gifts, certainly. But it can be as simple as lawn-mowing, or putting the seat down, or getting one’s fucking feet off the table.

Little else, though, has quite the innocent payoff of pleasing adolescent girls.

Hence, I accompanied my nine year old daughter Ruby to “Disney’s High School Musical on Ice” at what was once called the Oakland Coliseum (though it now seems to be named after some over-monied high-tech database giant).

It was a bit odd being in that building again. It’s been a while. I’ve lost count of how many concerts I saw there through the seventies and eighties. They seem to have re-modeled the place heavily, or the drugs I was on back in those days did worse to my memory than I was aware.

But that night, it wasn’t stoner boys in down coats and waffle-stomper boots, sporting Yes and Genesis and Pink Floyd t-shirts. Tonight, the smell of shampoo and lip-glass and adolescent excitement was in the air.

There’s a sound – unlike any other sound, anywhere. This is what Beatlemania must have sounded like in person. This is the sound five thousand adolescent girls screaming as one, at the top of every tiny set of lungs, when an skater dressed and made up and wigged to vaguely resmble Zac Efron takes of his shirt and does a bit of fancy footwork across the ice.

I have to admit, such excitement is infectious.

Now, if you have adolescent girls at home, or know someone who does, you are all too aware of the whole High School Musical phenomenon. I won’t bother to describe, or try to explain, why this low-budget Disney Channel made-for-television movie has become such a massive hit. What I’ll say, though, is that it’s cute, silly, has pretty good songs, and likable stars (and as we know from the gossip pages, Vanessa Anne Hudgens is pretty tasty indeed in her birthday suit.)

But one has to be at least a bit afraid at the idea of – well, anything on ice that isn’t either olympic, or a comestible.

Ok, maybe it was just the screaming girls. Maybe it was the fantastic seats I had (I could reach the ice from my seats, which means I was close enough to see the skaters sweat, and see the expressions on their faces when they would occasionally drop character). Or maybe it’s that I genuinely love figure skating. But I admit it – I liked it. It was, possibly, the most soulless piece of live performance I’ve ever seen, and yet I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I’m blaming the little girls. It’s hard to be jaded and cynical when you’re sitting behind a ten year old who looks like she’s seeing god every time a favorite character skates by

Ruby was absolutely paralyzed with excitement. I thought she was unhappy halfway through the first act, and then realized, she was utterly overwhelmed into a fugue state. She wasn’t even able to applaud at first. I’m not entirely sure she was even breathing. When we got home, she had a sobbing breakdown, a combination of exaustion (WAY past her bedtime) and thrill over-load.

I can’t say I want to go back and see HSMonI again right away. But I also don’t at all mind the time and money. Well, well worth it. And damn, are those good Dad Points.

Saturday, Ruby goes with me to her first hockey game; thus, she gets to see what ice should look like, ie, with blood on it.

Update: I just read a review of this show by SFGate’s Peter Hartlaub. He captures it perfectly.

meet me at musso n’ frank

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I’ve been having’ one of those days – weeks, actually – when I’m just craving a cocktail.

But not – you know, just alcohol. It’s not really alcohol I want. It’s the time, the place, the, you know, the thing.

There are those places you miss; not a place place, not Hawaii or London or the Scottish Highlands, Venice or New Orleans. That’s bigger, and sadder. That’s a spirit, a feeling.

No, I mean that smaller scale sense of missing. A coffee shop where one once sat, eating greasy food and drinking bad coffee after late nights. The book store where one used to sit and read in a dusty corner. The bar where one once met friends and heard local bands.

And it doesn’t have to be a hangout. Some places I’ve been, they got under my skin after one visit. A pub by the river in York; a fish n’ chips stand on the Royal Mile; a bar down below canal level in Brügge.

One such – and the place I’ve been visualizing now – is a silly place indeed. You know the place if you live in Hollywood; you know it by rep if you read about LA. If you’ve read crime novels by Michael Connely or Robert Crais or Jonathan Kellerman, you know the place as if you’ve been there, eating steaks and drinking mid-day with rough men.

Musso and Frank. Hollywood’s oldest eatery they call it; it feels like it. It feels like it’s seen more old hollywood action than any studio or any mansion. You can imagine Welles, Chaplain or Valentino; the Mark brothers or Clark Gable. You can imagine writers, Bukowski, Faulkner, Hemmingway. They live on in the dark walls and worn tables.

It’s the kind of dark, wood paneled room, the kind of old-fashioned chop house ambiance, that just seems to have ghosts and seem to inspire dreams.

Aside from that kind of cuisine, aside from the feeling that someone very important or deeply sinister may’ve sat in this same seat yesterday or may tomorrow, the thing one goes to musso n frank for would be martinis. And that’s what I’ve been salivating for. Ice-cold, served with an odd, tiny carafe on the side (so you get an extra pour), this is place that understand exactly how a martini should taste.

And I’ve been sitting here all day, trying to concentrate on incredibly dull but important data gathering (to prove with numbers what everyone already knows to be true). But my mind is in that dark, smokey room, (because never mind the silly laws, in my head it’s smokey, like it would have been in those days), with a fine, mysterious dark-haired girl beside me, and we’re drinking icy cold martinis.

Outside it’s daylight – because it has to be. But here inside, I shade my eyes with the brim of a hat, and I breath in the perfume of her, and sip icy cold gin – always gin, never vodka.

Thats where I am today. But the martini I might make when I get home – or not – wouldn’t taste the same. Because the scene is what I want, and the company, the company of ghosts and beautiful, mysterious women. The drinks? Well, they’re just the taste on my tongue.

TNK

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

Because I just loaded this up to show a friend what 801 sounded like: TNK. Enjoy. (Damn, Bill MacCormick is an awesome bass player…)

Because I just loaded this up to show a friend what 801 sounded like: TNK.

Enjoy.

(Damn, Bill MacCormick is an awesome bass player…)