Turntable + Blue Light

Or, How a Working-Class Singer from Dublin Taught This Middle-Class Girl from Virginia to Never Take Music Lightly Again

I was having coffee with an acquaintance of mine, let’s call her Alison. She brought up a generally well-regarded film and asked me what I thought about it. I answered that I thought it was a pandering and wretched piece of shit, and I had felt like I needed a shower after leaving the theater. Alison’s face clouded, and she began to try to convince me I was wrong. She plaintively cited the pedigree of the actors, and her belief that the filmmakers were brave and uncompromising. She wouldn’t shut up about it. She acted like I’d insulted her personally, impugned her character, accused her of some fundamental failing of taste and judgment.

We still saw each other after that, but Alison was timid, almost distrustful. I realized one day that my disdain for this film she loved had made her genuinely not trust me, like she’d discovered, after years of thinking we both liked the Yankees, that I was really a Red Sox fan. I didn’t understand it at the time - I thought it was pretty lame, actually - but I’ve developed a cultural allegiance of my own that meets and even eclipses Alison’s. And so I say it, and so I mean it: I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like Damien Dempsey.

I’ve only played his music to one of my friends, a close one, and I did it with extreme reluctance. To be frank, if I hadn’t had a couple of drinks in me I don’t think I would have dared. I put on a favorite track of mine, all the while entertaining a furious inner monologue. She’s gotta love him, right? She has to. This is a great fucking song. It’s nonnegotiable. It’s not up for discussion. It would be impossible to have red, living blood in your veins and not like this song. I even handed her an article to read at the same time, thinking that maybe a so-so, distracted response would allow me to laugh the whole thing off and not have to eighty-six our relationship entirely. About a minute into the song, she looked up from the magazine. “God,” she said, “rip my heart out, why don’t you?” I let out a nervous giggle. I was safe.

The descent into fandom is always a peculiar thing. Often, it takes a simple form: One minute you don’t know someone exists, the next you’re brokering with shady internet retailers for used copies of obscure charity releases. Other times, it’s more circuitous and does not, like the path to true love, run smooth.

I first saw Damien Dempsey on the recommendation of, literally, the-guy-sitting-next-to-me-at-the-bar, someone I liked immensely but didn’t know well. I knew that a musician from Dublin was playing that Saturday, but I didn’t want to take the trouble to enlist any of my friends to go with me; they are people who are not generally tempted by an evening of seeing an unknown quantity at a tiny Irish pub. I told Liam I doubted I’d be able to sell it to anyone, at which point he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Then come alone. I’m not fucking joking. He’s really good.”

I went and, standing by Liam in the audience, I leaned over and agreed that yes, these songs were lovely. He laughed in my face. The musician onstage was the opening act. A little while later, the opener was replaced by a big, rather nondescript guy whose body language hinted at a strange combination of “I-am-what-I-am” modesty and “don’t-fuck-with-me” intensity. He sat down on a stool, closed his eyes, and without preamble, launched into a song.

I can’t for the life of me remember what that song was, but I didn’t like it at all. And the funny thing is: I got the distinct impression that it didn’t like me, either. The song demanded to be listened to, like it had business with me personally and would not be waylaid. I felt uncomfortable, assaulted, and I slowly started moving - fleeing, practically - to the back of the crowd. If I’d been a cat, my ears would have flattened. I left after a few songs, and went home shaken but not favorably impressed. “That guy obviously thinks he’s some kind of troubadour,” I remember thinking huffily. “Give me a break.”

But I kept the ticket stub. I have no idea why. I even stuck the thing on my fridge.

It must have been over a year later when, sitting in the same pub, I found myself singing along with a song that was played often on the jukebox. It had a haunting opening - a man with a huge voice singing words at once absurdly simple and utterly unforgettable. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone what it was - I was singing the damn song, after all - so I went home that night and Googled that singular line: "Lord, won’t you give me the strength to be strong / and be true." I followed the first listed link to a website.

I had to laugh. It was the same fucking guy.

I went out and bought the album (Seize the Day, the only Dempsey record thus far released in the United States) and that was all she wrote. It was over. I was the Christmas goose and I was done. The pursuit of obscure charity releases began subsequently, and I've never looked back.

In retrospect, it’s no mystery why my first reaction to Dempsey was less than warm. His music isn’t inclusive, at least not in the traditional sense. He’s almost painfully earnest but yet is also unapologetically combative. He manages, in a single line from his latest album, Shots, to take a swipe at the populations of seven different countries, asking them if they bother to feel ashamed of their nations’ colonial histories and adding that, if they “have any kind of mind,” they should.

To put it another way, he requires a little give and take. His songs - in a refreshing change from the vague, milquetoast emotionalism of most commercial rock - are all actually about something. Politics, economics and history mix with love, frustration and despair to create some of the most challenging and beautiful music you're likely to hear.

He can change to whom he’s singing within one song, and “you” can be either who he’s defending or who he’s berating. And I, for one, must admit that I'm in the latter category almost as often as the former. He exhorts the listener to love yourself but also to change yourself - he doesn’t let anyone off the hook. For all of the “us versus them” in his music there’s an equal measure of Invictus-like certainty that you’re in charge of your own destiny, and that the greatest battle you’ll ever fight is with yourself.

So, inclusive his music is not. What it is, strangely, is universal - despite the fact that so much of it is deeply concerned with Dempsey’s personal history and identity. “Factories, Trains, and Houses,” the song I played my friend, is about growing up in a grim urban environment, populated by people who joyride, drink, fight, grow old, and die before their time. I grew up in stereotypical suburbia, a place so pretty and neat that you could receive a cease-and-desist order for erecting an unattractive swing set. Our worlds are so different, but his opinion of the world at large - the world that belongs to all of us - is undeniably true. Maybe he just got me at the right time, but Dempsey has forced me to face some rather unpleasant facts: about my place in the world, how I live my life, and whether I am the person I really want to, and ought to, be.

The best music is, in my mind, aspirational. It’s music that tells it like it is, in a way you either can’t or are afraid to. You wish you could, and when someone does it for you, the only honest response is gratitude. It’s not music that pets or coddles you, not music that tells you that everything’s okay. It’s music that challenges you to a bare-knuckled fistfight, throws down the proverbial gauntlet, and lets you know that, even though you’re about to get seven shades of shit beaten out of you, you’ll be better for it in the morning. Like my friend said, it’s music that rips your heart out, and when you pick the poor thing off the floor, dust it off, and put it back in your chest, you realize it’s somehow stronger.

Before a month ago, I’d never been on a fan message board in my life. But, knowing I was going to write about Dempsey ("Damo" to his fans), I wanted to get some impressions from the fellow smitten. I hadn't been reading the posts for five minutes before I felt an overwhelming sense of vindication. For, in addition to the expected "Oh-my-God-that-gig-was-so-great" enthusiasm, there was the heartfelt testimony of people, like me, for whom Dempsey's music is truly vital.

One man lost someone close to him to heroin, and found strength in the song “Ghosts of Overdoses.” He wrote, “Damo has guts and you can see the passion. I could imagine that acoustic guitar as a shillelagh [cudgel] bashing the heads of the cynics, critics, and the up-their-own-arse negative people of this world.”

Another comes from the same area in Dublin as Dempsey and understands being judged by your accent and provenance and being looked down on as a "skanger" (a derogatory term for a Northside, working-class Dubliner who speaks in a certain way). He also pointed out that Dempsey, unlike most Irish artists, sings in his own accent, in a simple yet poignant protest against homogenization and prejudice.

Another described Dempsey as singing each song “like he’s trying to kill you with it. If you're open to it, he can really break through your shell and get at your heart in a way that very few singers can because very few singers want to. They want to draw you into their misery, but Damo is more like 'Hey, I went through it too and I'm still standing and singing and I've turned all that negativity and shit into positivity and art and you can too.'”

Still another was watching TV when, as he put it, he came across a song [my beloved “Factories, Trains and Houses”] that “elevates ordinary observations/experiences about growing up in Dublin to such a level of beauty and longing that I found myself looking back over those very same experiences in my life growing up in Dublin through the lens created in the melody. But the real impact of the song was the unexpected transcendence of the escapism, in the repeated refrain "Howth Junction could take you away / and in the hayfields we'd squander the day." It took the song from the local to the universal again with a pervasive longing which quite simply blew me away...on my big armchair...surfing the channels...what a blessed discovery..no songwriter has hit me as hard.” Well, folks, there’s no way on God’s green earth that I can put it any better than that.

Music has many forms and functions, and I won't pretend I don't like to blissfully rock out, or sing along to fun songs on road trips, or dance to a song just because the bass line's good. But music is also supposed to be art, and the best kind should never be a joke, a diversion, or something to listen to on line at the bank. It should burn down into your gut, give you aggro and give you hope, lead you down a road you may have never even noticed was there before. It should, beyond all expectation, change you a little bit for the good.

A very smart man once said to me: “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. The only thing that matters is what side of the line you choose to stand on.” I remember being frustrated by that statement, demanding, “What line? You show me the damn thing and then we’ll talk.” Well, I’ve found a pretty good line all by myself, and Dempsey’s drawn it. To put it another way: If loving Damien Dempsey is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

So, go out and buy one of his albums. Buy an import - get one off eBay if you have to. You can thank me later. Or, if you don’t like it...well, then it won’t matter. Because I’ll probably never speak to your soulless ass again.

—Jan Herndon
jan.turntable@gmail.com

x

Posted by janiceherndon at 05:42 PM | Permalink

Photographs

Colonne Vendome

Concorde Roue

Montmartre

New York

Posted by arielleguy at 05:09 PM | Permalink

Poems

Widow her
In no place
w/out yr
breath & heat
a winnow
fancy flipping
down the sink drain
sad & stuck
alert & upright

With her
was in place
w/out her
am nowhere
waiting for her
to return
a dream of real
touch
or a sound
a tone
shaping song’s heat

•

separated
draped & shaped by
widower’s weeds
holds my body
wrapped in algae
drowning
which is what
mourning is

•

weighed down w/
wisdom
death reveals
a living burden
a pulsation
memory pulls towards
& away from
any sign of her being
here once as you are now

•

Oppressed by grief’s
black gaul
left solitary
in memory
moving on
backwards

•

‘be empty’
widewe
Old English
emptied out
another tossed bouquet of
widow’s weeds
& black humor
rumors of other worlds

I sit before Ouija
moving mouse
into limbo’s charged
unknowable

•

How to imagine you
to know you
without you
within me
on the surface
like a snapshot
in deep closed
emulsion

•

SPIRIT GUM [section]

Everything
reductive
illusional
delusional
first got me in Hollywood
‘s metaphysical swoon
off the edge into blue Pacific
notions of mystic solidarity non-stop sunshine & death
on mortuary sponsored
bus stop benches

astrologers divining
fixed certainty
& magi high on options
bought & sold
tantric devotion
in bungalows
behind stately stucco mosques

barrage of lurid incense smog

Huxley w/milk smeared eyes gropes walls to find his way back to words

•

the chapbook & tomes
had no magic to pull me into
belief, remained asleep

•

Posted by arielleguy at 04:18 PM | Permalink

ON PEOPLE (observations)

*

People look forlorn on the subway.

*

People say, did you like it?
They also say, which did you like better?
That's the way they talk these days.

*

People want to have children.
I want two, she says.
I want lots, he says.

*

People are still children.
People say I like that sweater. Where did you buy it, they ask.
Then the people make a mental note of this information, storing it like an acorn for their illustrious future sweater-wearing hibernation when they will become senile and, resentful and they will not have the sweaters they liked.

*

People follow their thoughts and are misled by them.
Their sentences fall into pre-molded patterns where meaning is scarce and cushy. Or else: shapes that don't fit the slots and holes provided by speech. People get distracted easily: they start the sentence on one subject and a word, death or kitty-cat, leads them altogether astray.

*

More about people:

People look at each other
They don't know what to say

People smile at each other
They do not know why they are smiling

People don't know why they exist
so they smoke a cigarette

They wait for the
next train

They wait for the

next thought

*

People don't know how to deal with miracles. They gape in awe, and then forget it. Just like with death, people don't know how to deal with it. Their mouths open and because of their embarrassment at this gaping yellow mouth they begin to talk. Naturally, people say the most shameful things, things they might regret afterwards if only they did not forget.

*

People sleep fitfully
People wake up and go to work

People die of natural causes
People die of airliner catastrophes
People die of carelessness
People die of bad (or expired) medicine
People die by their own hands
People die of trench warfare, of envy, of ennui
People die of madness or
People die of pulmonary disease

Let the day die
one closing eye
says to its brother
in arms.

An actor dies in his sleep
He was a great actor
People don't want other people
to know what hit them
He died peacefully, at least

People expire of exhaustion, dead tired
People die of thirst,
for coffee

People die in their sleep
in their dreams
at the movies

*

Every movie is about people. I'm tired of movies about people. I have to see people all the time around me. Let's make some movies about objects, and then later we can go back to making movies about people.

*

The Jew with one short foot.
The old black man dressed head to toe in impeccable brown, asleep on the subway.
The pretty girl with short blonde hair in a museum guard uniform.
The lady picking her skirt away from her underwear.
Chardin's rabbits in death as in sleep, calm, gray background like the gray carpet marred with wet footsteps.

*

[ end ]

Matvei Yankelevich is the editor of the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Presse, where he co-edits 6x6 and helps design and print books, and sweeps up the bits of paper all over the floor. His translations
of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky are forthcoming in books from Northwestern Univ. Press and Green Integer. His translation of Mayakovsky's Cloud in Pants is in Circumference. His own poems appear in small mags, on pencils, and on-line.

UDP can be found at: www.uglyducklingpresse.org.

Posted by arielleguy at 03:40 PM | Permalink

Dungen, September 15th, 2005, Bowery Ballroom, NYC
Ta Det Lugnt, Subliminal Records

From the very first beats of "Panda" on Dungen's CD, Ta Det Lugnt (in Swedish, means "Take it easy") I knew I was in for a treat. Dungen are at their best when they take their odd, swelling guitar riffs and vocal melodies and abuse them beautifully with an unexpected raw drumbeat or little section of noise inserted into an otherwise straightforward rock song. But they are anything but straightforward and that's what keeps this album interesting. They aren't afraid to take little risks that don't seem so risky because they fall naturally into place in the song's delivery. The songwriting seems both planned and inspired, a nice balance between spacey jam parts and jangly, fun hooks. Although somewhat hard to categorize and describe, Dungen plays at hippie but definitely satisfies that rock urge - don't think Phish, think something else, a little bit harder-edged. On songs like "Du är för fin för mig," ("You are too pretty for me") "Festival," and "Bortglömd," ("Forgotten") lead singer Gustav Ejstes sings his heart out but remains just this side of too earnest, keeping it real - he has that dirtiness a rock singer can't call himself a rock singer without. The Swedish lyrics add to the sweet, dark psychedelia, and you can pretty much swear you know exactly what he means. This album is dirty and lovely and just messy enough to compel multiple, and more, multiplying listens, where you hear different layers every time.

In contrast, their live show at the Bowery Ballroom, as part of SPIN's showcase during the CMJ shows, was a bit disappointing. Some of their live versions of the songs didn't translate well onto the stage. The band seemed tired, but more than that, disjointed and not jelling together as they do on record. The drummer was the only one who seemed alive, getting into the music and playing from a real, unshowmanlike place - the others seemed a bit too stagey, and less compelled by their music as by putting on a good show. They performed some of their songs from the album like "Festival" and the title track pretty faithfully, and that was where they shone - within their own set format, they could play and deliver. But their jams went on too long and without much spark. For jams to work, they need to be so psychedelic, so wired through with their own energy that they float the audience out on some long, hanging, transcendental jag. These jams were flat and disconnected, no life. They seemed like a too-young, not quite mature band, not quite sure of who they are, whereas on CD, they flash through with uniqueness and fresh oomph that is carried through with confidence and ripeness. It was a bit like watching a fake Swedish Robert Plant on stage, which is fine, but the prancing and posing wasn't bucked up by brilliant playing.

I am still not giving up on them, though. Ta Det Lugnt is one of the freshest, most intriguing collections of weird jaunts, amusements of sound, and layered instrumentation that I've heard so I am willing to give Dungen the benefit of the doubt for this one live show. Everyone has an off night. So here's to seeing them again, with all hope that they will fulfill the promise of their CD.

-Arielle Guy

Ta Det Lugnt, Subliminal Sounds

The drums are what I should say is my favorite component of Dungen's latest album, Ta Det Lugnt. Well, they're quite good: sometimes jazzy, sometimes as epic and controlled as a marching band, and sometimes as uncompromising as a 60s garage rock band. At this juncture, Swedish psych rock has met its band of 2005. But it is not just the impressive drumming on this album that makes it so great, all of the instrumentation is so full and pretty. It all fits into place from the catchy "Panda" to the instrumentally dramatic "Jamna Plågor." In "Jamna Plågor" only drums and an electric guitar with a lot of reverb are present in this runaway song. However, the interlude to "Panda" is a drum solo - the harmonizing vocals make their appearance soon enough. Before you can even think about it, "Panda" has turned into a fantastic rock song. At the climax in the music, beaming guitars triumph and drums embrace the noise and, majestically, the song has come to an end. As a complete composition, Ta Det Lugnt is the intriguing album that you just cannot stop listening to. Even if you do not understand Swedish, it soon becomes your preferred soundtrack to daily life.

- Nancy Wolfe

Posted by arielleguy at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Former Dischord Records partners in crime, Supersystem, (members of El Guapo) open things up for the final Washington, DC showcase of its kind at the Knitting Factory. September 20, 2005 marks Q and Not U's final concert in New York City.

For a Dischord showcase in NYC, the crowd at 11pm is larger than usual. Supersystem takes the stage as a confused gang of musicians who know their audience well. They want to dance and will dance continuously throughout the night.

Last year, same time, Supersystem was El Guapo and was wonderful. Now they have switched labels, changed names and the overall sound has also been tweaked. Justin Moyer, the self-proclaimed genius of the band, dresses in a black hoodie, using it to hide in from time to time during the set. Supersystem is funky, but not as rhythmically charged as I have seen when they performed as El Guapo. A favorite, "Glass House," is played, but a feeling is missing. What feeling - could this just be nostalgia for post-punk danceable music that Dischord used to provide by another recently extinct band, Black Eyes?

On its own, the Supersystem album is only all right, but it finally becomes illuminated tonight. Unlike the displaced disjointedness that Supersystem expresses when playing El Guapo songs, their own songs are together, more dramatic and melodic. Finally, the semantics of an onstage persona like Moyer come together. Moyer dances angularly, bending his elbows and knees to the beat and something else takes over. Their sound has gone out of this world into a sound like an early 90s synth punk band. The crowd at this point, reacting positively to the change, nods and dances in sync for the first time in the evening.

Live music is great and Supersystem introduces that band that gave DC back its political dance music. Q and Not U make kids from DC proud of their place of origin as music scenes change, but hometowns never do. That could be why they are so popular, why their last show in DC was sold out, why the crowd control at the final Ft. Reno (DC's free summer stage which covers performances from local bands, many from Dischord) show was so intense, so utterly intense.

At the Knitting Factory performance there is a mosh pit, highly unlikely for a show at the Knitting Factory. Speeches between songs bring members of the audience back to their sorrow at the announced breakup of one of their favorite DC bands, if not their favorite. However, "Book of Flags" perks up their ears and makes everyone realize how truly amazing it is to be a witness at this concert.
Q and Not U is that band that everyone's been talking about, album after album, year after year. Their performances are political, mind-blowing, ferocious, and simply incredible. The post-punk dance-pop world that NYC creates will never understand what their city has just lost tonight.

- Nancy Wolfe

Posted by arielleguy at 09:17 AM | Permalink

The Posies headline a night of power pop to remember. September 29, 2005, Bowery Ballroom, NYC.

At the early hour of 10pm, I stumble into the Bowery Ballroom as The Deathray Davies are making their way through a set full of power chords and quick stops and starts. The Deathray Davies have many band members, each one bringing their own sound and demeanor to the table; the man playing the maracas has stolen my heart tonight, he has a long beard and seems the most fantastic.

Next on the bill is Oranger, a small band with a following of screaming women and tight pants-wearing middle-aged men. Their sound is poppier than The Deathray Davies and the keyboardist almost outdoes the maraca player. His solos make the organ's chords spin out of control, surely the rock star of his band. Insane keyboardists are not as rare as one would assume, but this one is actually good. Each Oranger song is keyboard-enthused, unlike a lot of rock music. These songs have character.

Yet, during the break, I just keep thinking to myself, I want the Posies to go on! And they do, full of charm, reverence and pure hilarity. The Posies are like cult gods to the NYC audience tonight. One woman cannot control herself - hailing from Helsinki, she wails, "Come to Finland; this audience is lame!" All that she accomplishes is riling up the crowd, getting them more excited for the Posies. The audience is loving every moment of the banter between the band and their loyal fans. And the fans are rewarded at the encore when the Posies ask people to come up on stage and dance. Surprisingly, the Finnish personage who was so vivaciously loud does not express interest in sharing the stage with her favorite band.

Musically, the performance is awesome. Like Alice Cooper in appearance, the guitarist/keyboardist goes crazy. His performance encompasses uppity solos and as many 'rock moments' as there are stars in the sky. And, yes, elements of the Posies can be compared to stars in the sky. Just listen to their lyrics and musical intent. When he plays the keyboard, he plays with such fervor one can't tell if it is part of the song or if all of it is ad-lib. Like brighter constellations, nice introductions are given to familiar songs, such as "a sentimental love song" for the favorite, "Confessions."

Each song is played with more power than the previous, but the ever important 'crowd control' was established in the beginning of their set. The voracious banter suddenly turns into crowd involvement and stripping at the end of their set. The guitarist/keyboardist takes off his shirt during an extended solo and he and the lead singer head down to the audience to feverishly play a song. They move down to their fans' level and complete what is necessary for the Posies to be the type of band that they are.

Their fans are loyal because the Posies are loyal to their fans, end of story.

- Nancy Wolfe

Posted by arielleguy at 09:11 AM | Permalink

A Poem

I Have a Little Spot

The performance was marvelous.
What is said sometimes helpful.
Writing truncated like contemporary life.
But this time translated and back again.
We relied upon an actress.
She would not disappoint us.
The crowd became restless.
The trance was sometimes broken.
And achieved again.
The wine was bad.
The wine was good.
The food was fine.
The food was inedible.

The ride home terrifying at first. Then a bore. The sleep treacherous. Objects were left in the bed.

The soldier never returned.
The man wanted the bed but not the woman in it.
The waterfront was surrounded with sewage. There was not one pump.
His son was acting out, stealing things.
We swam in the sewage. It took a while for us to bathe.
She tried to teach him a sport she did not know.
They came for food. We stole some for them.
She tried to find a spot on the man that would stop. A spot she could touch.
Fries. And beach fare.
She woke up, feeling dirty.
She had a plan, but no money.
She raised the heat, went back to sleep.
She had saved up several favors.
Empty, though she'd never had it quite like this before.
A baby viable, a womb old.

Rachel Levitsky is a poet and teacher. Her books include Under the Sun, Cartographies of Error, Dearly, Dearly 3,4, 6 and The Adventures of Yaya and Grace. In 1999, she founded New York City's feminist avant garde poetry series Belladonna*.

Posted by arielleguy at 09:02 AM | Permalink

Joe's Pub, New York, September 12, 2005

The event
So, the clouds parted between the U.K. and U.S. and the legendary former Stiff Records recording artist Lene Lovich, a B (or A, depending on where you're at) queen of a new (still) kind of new wave-punk-no wave subpop (in the true sense of the word, not the brand) that flourished under the radar in the late 1970s/early 1980s played a rare show in the States. Lene was one of a number (not a million) of highly eccentric women musicians in that scene who did not fit into any neat category of music, no matter how hard you tried to classify them. She is often compared to, but not quite like Poly Styrene, Siouxsie, the Raincoats, and Nina Hagen. Along with another label mate, Rachel Sweet, the now defunct infamous Stiff Records label - "If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a fuck" - was known for straight-up, quirky, and never boring, spell-binding artists who didn't get regular radio airplay. The Stiff women had strong public images, and lyrics and personalities that did not rely on skimpy outfits. Now on the New York-based label, the Stereo Society, Lene's new record seems to seamlessly pick up where she left off in the early 1980s. A mother of two girls who are now grown, Lene is spending more time on her music, to the delight of her devoted fans.

The scene
You could feel how highly anticipated Lene's show was by the buzz in the line out the door of Joe's Pub. You couldn't help but feel "in the know" - I mean, really in the know. Like, what in-the-know meant before secret clubs became the norm, scattered throughout Chelsea and Williamsburg. I bought my ticket online weeks ahead of time and I jittered while I did it. It felt weird, because Lene symbolizes so much about the true DIY style when it was just beginning. Buying a ticket for a Lene Lovich show with a credit card. It just seemed like an oxymoron. The show was sold out and packed with gay guys who knew every single word of the old songs - they must have been Bowie types in the 1970s.

The crowd was also sprinkled with punk women musicians (I saw Bitch of former Bitch & Animal fame), in-the-know-downtown-crowd-with-heavy-black-horn-rimmed-glasses-who-were-there-before- you-were-so-don't-even-think-about-it-types, one perfect 21-year-old replica of Lene in her heyday (with the two high braids), and her mother, both from Long Island. My companion and I heard them talking as they were going home to Long Island after the show and it turned out the mom was a big fan. Yeah, there were a few annoying Williamsburg hipsters, looking uncomfortable with this no poseurs crowd. It felt like a working-class crowd of real New Yorkers (if there is such a thing anymore), who were knowledgeable about the music. It felt like the 1980s. It was sort of a surreal scene. Lene is this spectacular character, and even though her crowd looked tame, underneath they were it’s-another-story kind of crowd. Many looked like they saw Lene's early shows in New York; the audience just had that feeling. There was one perfectly "normal" suburbs-business-looking-man standing next to me, who knew all Lene's old songs by heart - even more than the young Lene look-alike with neo-goth attire, looking just like Lene on her 1979 Stiff Records Stateless album.

The review
I was crossing my fingers for Lene to play her greatest hits, and then I realized that I have no proof as to what her greatest hits are! I always thought several of the songs from Stateless were timeless classics: "One in Million People," "Momentary Breakdown," and "I Think We're Alone Now" which is the weirdest, outer space-sounding remake of that classic song - you'll feel like you're on the moon. OOOOOOOOHHH! Only the most experimental artist in the true sense of the word would interpret "I Think We're Alone Now" to quite literally feel like being in outer space. It renders Tiffany's cover laughable and the 1960s original as a behaved, tame tune of two teens in the back of a diner sharing a banana split.

Many of her songs were from her new disc, Shadows and Dust. They were giving away free Shadows and Dust promo posters of a spacey-looking Lene in a glittery, wide-eyed stare. Lene is known for her hard open-eyed look, and geometric movement on stage. Her album covers were graphic art in the true sense of the word - often incorporating a Man Ray or Dali-esqe feel. Her Flex album's insert featured old-school scientific-looking diagrams.

Lene's new songs from Shadows and Dust sound heavier, more guitar-y and reminiscent of early Cocteau Twins and Curve. The lyrics continue to be philosophical and irreverent. There's a song about an insect eater, and others called "Gothica," "Wicked Witch," and "Ghost Story." The synth sound is still there, but there’s a deeper, lower, driving guitar-ish sound and a more belabored vocal style. It's still exciting, it's just a slightly different growth and direction. What's somewhat gone is the poppy keyboard-ish and marching band "space out" sound that was consistent on Stateless, No Man's Land, and Flex from the late 1970s/early 1980s. (Those are the only three albums I have of Lene's; I never was able to acquire March or the one EP she did.)

Lene is the true goth. Not the phony-manufactured, marketable post-Nine Inch Nails kind, but the true mix of goth, punk, synth-techno and supreme originality. Her presence, outfit, and music the night of her show were no exception. She was dressed in what could only be described as a more black-clad Cyndi Lauper meets Siouxsie meets a dash of 1980s, but not because that decade is cool now. She had a layered look with a purple shirt/blazer with big buttons and sparkly high-top sneakers, along with her trademark two braids and a multi-colored head wrap. The lighting made her clothes seem like they were different shades of blue, purple, red, and green. Her movements were marching-geometric-performative, a la Diamanda Galas, but with more earthiness.

She smiled in between songs, chatted with the audience and moved her arms in front of her as if she was going to swim toward you in a wide-eyed, no-goggles breaststroke. She made it seem like she was singing to you only, and you felt like you were the only one. Her maturity was alluring. Her longtime musical collaborator/husband, Les Chappell, was still there, playing keyboards and guitar and sort of faded into the background even though you knew he was there. The crowd sang along to many of the songs, including her 1979 hit "Lucky Number" and "Home." I even wondered if some of the crowd had already gotten her new CD because it seemed like they knew the words to them too, solidly rocking their heads as if this was a heavy metal show. Yes, there was extra-long applause and more than one encore.

The background
I discovered Lene - literally - in the record bins of a tiny, but fabulous record store - in small-town Erie, PA where I spent a few years adrift in the mid-1990s. I was involved in the punk, experimental, etc. scene in my 20s in the 1990s, but no one ever told me about Lene Lovich. When I came across her albums, I was hooked. It felt like I discovered something secret, serious, and very cool. The songs from her Stiff albums had this eerie sound that had no contemporaries, then or today, even though she was a definite trailblazer for alternative women musicians. If you listen to the albums, they don't always sound dated. There's a slight disco and reggae sound on some of the songs, but it's always mixed with a new wave synth. They sound like children's Halloween songs sped up at a marching band tempo mixed with some punk. Sometimes you think the record is skipping, but it's not. On other tunes, under the surface is a Casablanca-esque, even country feel, with an ominous tone that feels like it is foreshadowing the future.

Lene now has a webpage on her Stereo Society label's website and it's a great source for information about her, upcoming shows, and significant reviews and interviews over the years. Some descriptions of Lene's style from that site - "Lene proved goth could be fun," "gleefully off kilter," "brilliantly giddy crush of goofy goth and rubbery funk" - are some of the better nuggets.

Though she's often thought of as from the U.K., Lene was actually born in the U.S. in Detroit as Marlene Premilovich to a British mother and Yugoslavian father. Her parents divorced when she was 13, and she moved to Britain with her mom. She went to art school in London where she met Chappell. At art school she studied sculpture, and after that, she began her start in music, spending several years singing in hotel bands. She then spent a short time in a band called the Diversions with Chappell. Then she went solo, and her first two singles, "I Think We're Alone Now," and "Lucky Number" were released by Stiff. She also starred in a French TV film called "Rock" with Nina Hagen. She's active in PETA and animal rights causes and, also with Hagen, recorded the fundraising single "Don't Kill the Animals." Once, when she was a teen, she was thrown out of a pub for playing Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" six times on the jukebox.

- SM Gray

Sources for Lene Lovich information for this article:
She's A Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll, by Gillian G. Gaar, Seal Press, 1992, pgs. 247-250
Stereosociety.com/lenelovich.com/

SM Gray is a writer, prose poet and filmmaker based in Flushing, Queens, NYC. Her next contribution will most likely be on the other Stiff Records queen, Rachel "Who Does Lisa Like?" Sweet.

Posted by arielleguy at 10:43 PM | Permalink

3 Poems

Fire

Dean used to fire in the gully down back
every weekend. I loved to hear the rounds--
something pure, something clear
when a bullet cuts through air.
Sometimes I wish Dean had never gone off.

Summer came dragging a woolen shawl of
fire to smoke out geriatric judges in
the night

It is lonely now
that the piano tinkles over fire creaking,
and glasses echo melting ice. Nice,
but lonely, with only a corpse of you,
since the you of your living now
cannot sprout the you of then whom I address.

Your match-drawn dagger
and my stick of liquid fire
are the same.
It's just the voiced nudge
of our brains
that names our difference.
There is here.
Then is now.

Where folks glide up bubble elevators
to hotel rooms that fetch $150 per night,
those few who take the fire stairs
might think they are back at the Y.

You have waxed in my mind
a red fire engine with a clever chrome smile.

The Walled City continues lawless.
Fire marshals and police watch at a
discreet, fearful distance.

I had once awakened to the house on fire
while she was sitting drunk in the
bathtub lighting matches to toilet paper
and on another occasion had awakened to
her holding a butcher knife above my
head about ready to strike.

Huang Stayed Cold All Winter

Even 10 pounds of
old pasteboard boxes
could not warm him
when the wind sneaked
through his drier bushes
in Kowloon Park.

But come spring,
Huang lit an idea
without a match,
wrote in big characters
on a large trash bag,
"STAY AWAY. DANGEROUS."
Doused with kerosene,
he sealed himself inside.

It was several days of warm rot,
before a gardener smelled the plot.

Royalty

Marie Laveau, voodoo queen,
bless us with your sharp wit.
An hundred red X's in tribute
we have scrawled
on your crumbling stone.

Marie Laveau,
embrace Manman Brigitte
around her slender waist
and roll your eyes.

Hear us, Marie Laveau.
Touch us this hot night
lest our fever burn us cold.
Rest not. Rest not, oh queen.
Your subjects kneel
in expectation.

Louie Crew, 69, is the author of 1,704 published poems and essays. He is an emeritus professor at Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey. In the 1980s he taught for several years in Beijing and Hong Kong. He publishes poetry resources at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/poetry.html.

Contact: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu

Posted by arielleguy at 09:45 PM | Permalink

Fuzz, sex, and drugs: the universe of The Cramps

Rock, it's all a sublime sacrilege.

Award shows for art are stupid - the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys. Can one person proclaim that one schlocky brain-dead Hollywood film or one crappy teenybopper-formulated-by-bloated-executives pop song really is the best? Does anyone have the right to say her favorite painter, even if he lopped off a body part, is the best painter or that a certain author who shot himself has no equal? People, of course, have their personal favorites, but art, highbrow or low, works on so many levels that we can't really make lists.

I make one exception to this rule. When it comes to rock music, I take a stand. One band rises to the top, and it is both the cream and the scum. It is the greatest of all time, the best that ever was, is, or will be. Rock 'n roll had one favored child, a demented, dirty, and lovable devil spawn. I'll happily grant that countless rock groups deserve your undying adoration. You should continue to worship at their feet if you feel the need. But only one band is rock ‘n’ roll. That band is the Cramps.

How can I make that proclamation? It's simple. The Cramps remain singular in one way. Like that perfect suction and collapse of a black hole, the Cramps have an all-consuming vision. It's not just their music, which is deity-defyingly great, it's the whole Cramped universe. They understand with every subatomic particle what makes rock music rock. They do it. They live it. They are it. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy have created a body of work in which the art and the artist have become inseparable. The Cramps are real, and that realness comes through every chord, stomp, and microphone shoved down a throat.

The Cramps are a four-piece, but at the core, we have two people: Lux at the microphone and Ivy on guitar. Yes, they're a couple, together for more than 30 years, and there's every indication that they are happy. I think this happiness adds something to The Cramps' music. Whether the subject is decapitation, bad trips, or bad dreams, it's still a celebration. And like the old concept of the godhead that no one wants to talk about anymore, The Cramps encompass and exalt in both the masculine and the feminine, cock and pussy rocking together. We have no epic ego struggles here. Lux is Elvis Fucking Christ and Ivy is the she-devil goddess. Each rules his or her own domain.

So what do the Cramps sound like? Musically, Lux and Ivy do what any true masters of an art form do. They look to the past while creating something absolutely original. The music pays homage to the early rockabilly sound, but there's so much else swarming around in there: the DIY ethic and sonic drive of punk, the rawness of garage rock, artiness, sex and lust, reverence for all of America's trash, extreme drug use, and a steamrolling wit. As Lux put it in "Garbageman":

It's just what you need
When you're down in the dumps
One half hillbilly and one half punk
Big long legs and one big mouth
The hottest thing from the North
To come out of the South

Usually, people describe bands by comparing them with other bands, but that's impossible in this case. No one else has that Cramped vision. Many bands have been influenced by the Cramps sound, but those that try to copy it usually mutate into cartoonish clones. For everyone else, it's an image, an act, not a way of life.

No other music holds onto that primate essence, music from the bowels of the Earth and the body. Listen to the guttural fuzz on "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" or the way the guitars grind and squeal and the drums drive in "Garbageman." Feel the engorging rhythm of "It Thing Hard-On" or the slinky pounding of "Dames, Booze, Chains and Boots." This music will get that early hominid inside you jumping. It's music for bad people, by real people, people just like you. The only distinction is that little something called genius.

Over the decades, the music has changed. In the late '70s, with two guitars, they sounded wild, sparse at times, true music innovators. Over time, the second guitar became a bass, and The Cramps' sound got fuller, tighter, even louder, all without becoming stale. And though drummers and bass players have changed over the years and the sound has evolved, we still hear that same pervasive ode to the sickness of humanity. From "Human Fly" to "Dr. Fucker M.D. (Musical Deviant)," we are taught the wise lesson that we "human beans" aren't special because we're somehow better than animals, we're special because we are the most fucked-up animal, the animal that makes art, be it an opera or a slasher flick. Even the most hifalutin' connoisseur just wants to grunt down in the mud every now and then. Our brains like art, like pretty things, and sex, and drugs, and hitting things with hammers … With The Cramps, you start with a hammer to the brain, and then move on to the next item in the list.

So what are The Cramps trying to tell us? If you've never heard Lux's lyrics, then you're missing out on rock's true poetic voice. He can be intriguing, obscene, and downright hilarious in just a few syllables. Nothing's regurgitated, and you always sense that sick mind working furiously behind the scenes. Lux takes the music seriously, but not himself. And rock musicians who think that they somehow inherently matter and can change the world are arrogant, preachy assholes, like how I sound in this essay. Then again, essays are a good place to preach, not a damned rock song.

That's not to say that you won't learn something from this music. You'll learn about art, sex, death, philosophy, violence, desire, and even love (driving you mad, perhaps). Each song displays genius in its own way. For instance, in these lines from "Wet Nightmare," we get a clear description of this heretofore undescribed nocturnal occurrence:

I seen a striptease torture
and blackbirds flyin' backwards
And a pagan rout in a hellhole
in a bed full o' crackers

It was a wet nightmare.

And in these lines from an homage to Herschell Gordon Lewis, "I Ain't Nuthin' but a Gorehound," we get an idea of what a Cramps-based religious cult might believe:

I don't know about art but I know what I like
I'll be surfin' in a swamp on a Saturday night
I've been to the mountain and it's just a big hill
I guess I'm nuthin' but a gorehound born to thrill.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Easy come, easy go, ain't no big fuss

Finally, we have this stream-of-consciousness tirade at the end of "Let's Get Fucked Up" that exemplifies Lux's unique poetic voice:

Baby, let's strap on a little of that abnormal delirium
We'll take a long fall down into that surrealist bucket
We'll make one big grease spot out of this town, baby
Hey, I wanna be your Siamese Chihuahua sweetheart
The ultimate degenerate
Psychopathia sexualis

Clearly, this is a man with something to say. We owe it to ourselves to shut up and listen.

The Cramps' vision can enhance just about anything. In general, you can tell the power of an artist's vision when that artist can take an existing composition and remake it as her own. So why do most song covers sound like the original, except much worse, by less talented musicians, and with all the life and vitality sucked out to make room for the cloyingly updated bells and whistles? We understand the concept: if the song was a hit for someone else, it might just make our sorry asses some money too. Don't change it too much or the audience will be confused. The Cramps have covered a lot of songs over the years, some obscure, some more famous. Yet somehow, every time The Cramps cover a song, it becomes a Cramps song. You'll never listen to the original the same way again.

Even when covering a well-known song, The Cramps claim ownership. For example, the band adapted one '80s hit song, and that adaptation just happens to explain the Cramped view of rock:

I dig that god damn rock 'n roll
That kinda stuff that don't save souls

Lux later sings:

Even before Van Gogh had art
Adam and Eve did it in the park
Yeah, they did that god damn rock 'n roll

The true test of rock greatness, however, is the live performance. How do The Cramps stack up against the rock gods we all know and love? I saw the band for the first time about 15 years ago. And though I'd been to loads of shows, it was still obvious that I was discovering something truly special, something seedy yet pure in its understanding of rock music as a whole. Before they came on, I saw a sign hanging from the curtain at the back of the empty stage, The Cramps logo in its horror-movie, blood-dripped font, golden and glittery and exquisitely trashy. For anyone else, a sign like that would have seemed like a joke or overkill. But for The Cramps, it was a promise: no frills, just honest-to-goodness fuckedupedness. Soon, we'd all be part of that unified Cramps vision. We were about to witness something truly authentic. And when they took the stage, they took it with an unforced, undeniable presence.

You've got the perfect front man in Lux Interior - grinning, leering, mouth sucking down microphones, shrieking a song, raving in an impromptu rant, or chatting convivially with the fans in the pit between songs. High heels, leather or latex pants (eventually down to a G-string), and a bottle of wine in hand. When it comes to frontmen, there's Lux, and then there's everybody else. Name your names, make your arguments, yank out your hair for all I care. Other singers try to pull it off, but they have the sheen of desperation in their sweat. They prance about the stage, eyes closed, mouths contorted as if the hot air they're puking up manufactures the very oxygen we need to live. They're acting, not being. Climbing stacks of amps, breaking mic stand after mic stand, moving around the stage like he owns it, both feeding and feeding off the audience, Lux ain't saving the world. If anything, he's showing you how to screw it all to hell while laughing like a hyena on speed. No one else can combine the madness, talent, energy, humor, and showmanship in one human form.

To his left, Poison Ivy. She, with the burst of red curling locks, a tighter-than-skin go-go outfit or maybe something see-through. On stage, she is Lux's opposite. For all his thrash, she hardly moves. She stays her ground, swaying her hips to the music, stamping her feet, but always in control. She glares, she sneers, silent except for her fingers on the guitar. It's as if Ivy has to contain The Cramps' genius by displaying a queen-like serenity, tinged with a queen-like haughtiness. (In the dozens of shows I've seen over the years, she's smiled only once that I can remember, when Lux climbed into the balcony at The Fillmore with a blow-up doll that some helpful audience member provided. Eventually, all you could see over the edge was a tangle of latex and plastic legs, and that was too much for even her.) Over the years, rock has given us many guitar gods, but few goddesses. We're accustomed to the usual testosterone-infused stylings, tongues lapping in rhythm to frenetic solos. Yet without the posturing, Ivy still controls the show, still makes sounds that cause humans to act like sharks at a feeding frenzy. Her fierceness comes from the merest flicker, a kick and stomp, and fingers along the fret.

My words do nothing but scratch the surface. Only genius can describe genius. I'm just smart enough to know it when I have it shoved in my face. So if the next Einstein would come up with a theory to explain why The Cramps are so fucking great, I'd be much obliged. For everyone else, go out and buy all the albums and devote yourself. The songs will take you places. You'll move from hell to heaven, but you'll mostly stay in hell, where people can do their Drano hot shots in fiery peace.

- Mark Latiner

Posted by arielleguy at 08:56 PM | Permalink

featuring reviews of: The Queers, M. Ward, Sufjan Stevens
...with More to Come!

The Queers Summer Hits, Number 1

A greatest hits collection of sorts, Summer Hits finds the New Hampshire surf punk trio's
latest line-up re-recording 15 of the group's more memorable tracks. Joined by drummer Dusty
Watson (Dick Dale) and bassist Philip Hill (Teen Idols), the band's solitary original member, Joe Queer, leads the group through a collection of classic Queers' tracks spanning the band's 2-decade career. Adding an unreleased cover of The Who's "The Kids Are Alright," along with a new track, "Aishiteruyo Kanojo," sung partly in Japanese, the album's high production quality may initially turn older fans off, but the classic Queers attitude that attracted them to the band in the first place shows through enough to keep the album entertaining.

- Robby King

M. Ward Transistor Radio

Beautifully written and poignantly honest and introspective, Portland based singer-songwriter M. Ward's 4th LP Transistor Radio plays like the soundtrack to a dreary fall afternoon happily wasted under a thick comforter in a warm, familiar bed.

Ward's just-gritty-enough vocals and slight Delta drawl, combined with his folk-influenced finger-style guitar playing and the album's lo-fi production value, give Transistor Radio a timeless feel that allows it to seem at home in almost any decade of the last century. The real beauty in Transistor Radio, though, is in its ability to make listeners feel happy for its sadness - solitude, death, and even insomnia are romanticized in a way that lets listeners take comfort in their frank familiarity.

Transistor Radio isn't entirely somber, though; Ward draws from a broad range of musical influences and isn't shy about presenting them all in his own unique voice. The album opens with a classical guitar rendition of Brian Wilson's "You Still Believe in Me," and its 8th track, "Big Boat," is an up-tempo blues romp that strikes up images of a Mississippi piano bar from the 1940s. Effortlessly transcending these genres without ever abandoning his signature smoky backroom sound, Ward's final product is a beautifully wistful and earnest album that's difficult not to fall in love with.

- Robby King

Sufjan Stevens Come On Feel The Illinoise!, Asthmatic Kitty Records

Sufjan Stevens writes an album of anthems. They propose life changes with soothing guitar strums and choral arrangements. A couple of favorites are "Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!" and "The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!" Both contain lyrical shadings and epic, persisting clarinet mixed with strings, as Stevens leads us to another town in his tour of the United States. He describes the people and surroundings with beauty and ease. Some tracks on the album, as it is over 20 songs long, are too long, too short, not containing valid meaning, but these two tracks contain the mantra that Stevens is meant to proclaim. Lines repeated and infused are duly noted, such as "I can't explain the state I am in / The state of my heart, he was my best friend" from "Palisades" and "Steven A. Douglass was a great debater, / But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator". Each of these lines exudes importance with its pronunciation and the instrumentation backing them. Almost every moment is epic, is an outspoken yet personal point of view. Stevens gives us a full album filled with quirks to both sadden and bring joy to its audience. The chorus tells the listener what to do and the audience follows like a church.

- Nancy Wolfe

Posted by arielleguy at 07:51 PM | Permalink

The pop-punk band Nerf Herder scored a minor radio hit and a major label recording contract in 1996 with the amusing ode "Van Halen." The three members of the band, including singer/guitarist Parry Gripp, also scored a free lunch in my college cafeteria, where I interviewed them for the school newspaper. I used my own meal plan credits to pay, but I refused to comp their road manager, who was forced to shell out the eight bucks.

As the tide of my financial priorities shifted, so did the state of popular music; Nerf Herder lost its major label deal and I lost track of its musical output.

Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of my journalistic ambitions, I spotted Mr. Gripp's solo debut in the used bins. A steal at $7 for 51 tracks, this album is so amusing even my frugal college-age self would have paid full price with no qualms.

Inspired by the demos he created for an ad agency, selling frozen waffles that include their own dipping sauce (a deal unfortunately left unsealed at the behest of the breakfast food bigwigs), For Those About To Shop, We Salute You offers a few dozen incisive pop gems in the guise of television jingles. Many are in ironic homage to previous hits by other artists (perfectly in keeping with the TV commercial theme) and some are purely born of the goofy imagination of Mr. Gripp.

Broken up into thematic sections like "Songs About Food Other Than Waffles" and "Songs About Sales and Deals," the liner notes are almost as entertaining as the album. Mr. Gripp's motivation is succinctly described thusly:

I announced my retirement from Nerf Herder at the end of 2003, having spent a large portion of the year riding around in an RV that smelled like baloney. I had discovered that while you never outgrow feeling like a loser or being rejected by all sorts of women, you do outgrow the desire to sing about it over and over again every night.

Not surprisingly, the ghost of The Ramones looms large. Among other less blatant references, "European Football" and "More Blades = Better Shave" pay tribute to "Blitzkrieg Bop." The former recasts the familiar "Hey Ho! Hey Ho! Let's go!" refrain as "Yea Ho, Yea Ho, Let's score a goal!" and proceeds to devolve into a perfectly flaccid and grooveless dance song highlighted by Mr. Gripp exclaiming "Sexy!" apropos of nothing. Intellectuals would note the succinct roasting the latter's chorus of "More blades! Better shave!" provides against the corporate co-opting of punk - but that would just dilute the fun of it. Besides, Mr. Gripp would be more than happy to sell his tunes to the highest bidder anyway.

Half-a-hundred pop-punk fake ad jingles would surely be a nightmare. But the sheer breadth of genres - and Mr. Gripp's songwriting acumen in all of them - is a pop culture revelation. White guy funk ("Bran Flakes"), Leon Redbone old-timey ("You Ain't Never Drank No Soda Like This One Here"), country ("This Is One Hell of a Truck"), gospel-country ("Good Woman, Good Truck, Good Life"), disco-country ("When You're Hot, You're Hot" knock-off "Big Mamma-Jamma"), dated electronica ("Got to Dip It!"), dated rap ("Nice Mother@!&*$ Truck"), surf-rock, psych-rock, the song "Wully Bully" and so on, are all present - many represented by more than one track.

Indeed, Mr. Gripp, the frozen food power elite did blow it by not using your songs about waffles and will have nobody but themselves to blame when their product fails miserably in the marketplace. The breakfast world's loss is the music world's gain, however. You've created a lasting artistic achievement infinitely more valuable than the windfall of royalty money you could have received if they used your mighty tunes.

Perhaps the best album-length ode to consumerism since The Who Sell Out, For Those About To Shop, We Salute You is a singular achievement in funny rock history - another flaming arrow cast at the pretentious Williamsburg cool guys who claim humor doesn't belong in music.

- Matthew Carlin

Posted by arielleguy at 07:37 PM | Permalink

Paintings

francisco

ENIAM

krisel & thurston

guitar fairy

bouquet

dragwood

pipedream

shiptrick

Michael Berryhill was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. In 1994, he graduated from University of Texas at Austin with a B.F.A. He currently resides in Austin, Texas where he enjoys riding his track bike and working on his 1966 Morris Mini Pickup.

Website: www.michaelberryhill.com
Contact: mgberryhill@yahoo.com

Posted by arielleguy at 07:07 PM | Permalink

Not many bands can do rollickingly haunted, pull off emotional literacy or make such odd juxtapositions work in brilliant ways the way The Decemberists can.

They are a wry and lyrical five-part band from Portland, Oregon who somehow manage to create a lively mix of marches, dirges, carnie tunesmithing, and sounds from a bygone era without descending to novelty-group kitsch. Instead, their sound is imaginative indie-folk-pop that will knock your socks off, even if you hate that indie folk stuff.

I was introduced to The Decemberists midway through their career, with their second label-released album, the critically acclaimed, Her Majesty the Decemberists. You like pirates, my boyfriend said, and that was extremely true, so I agreed. Listen to these guys, he said. They have a pirate song. And they did. "We set to sail on a packet full of spice, rum and tea leaves," sings Colin Meloy above mournful acoustic guitar and an accordion that wheezes and swoops like the gulls on the Bay.

I was immediately taken in a way that I am not often with a band - there is something about the wit, intelligence and charm of The Decemberists' music and songwriting that is heart-capturing and
irresistible in its uniqueness. Theirs is a romantic and epic kind of sound, and Colin Meloy, the band's writer and singer, seems not to be writing songs, but stories, creating a brightly, sharply imagined world of Dickensian melodrama, each song an event with its own richly envisioned backdrop in both music and words.

The opening lines of their new album, Picaresque, capture that same feeling that I found in Her Majesty. An infanta is borne "in her palanquin on the back of an elephant" and the music is majestic and wild. The penultimate song finds a sailor trapped in the belly of a whale with the man who had ruined his family, "leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch." In between, there are songs of chimney sweeps, soldiers in trenches during the first world war, and legionnaires fleeing Paris, and each brims over with ingenious and mellifluous rhymes - "The Duchess's luscious young girls" is gorgeous. Not to mention "And above all this folderal / on a bed made of chaparral." You really cannot help but admire that excessively.

Over the course of their discography, their sound has grown more and more intense and complicated, and Picaresque seems to be the pinnacle of this evolution, with thundering drums and amped-up melodies that still retain their whimsy, to match up well with the wistful eccentricity of the lyrics.

Meloy knows how to ground his rococo epics and twisty literate flourishes in the personal and powerful, so however comic or macabre (or both) the lyrics become, they're always powerfully moving, too, making Picaresque a must-have for lovers not just of pirates.

- Jen Larsen

Posted by arielleguy at 06:25 PM | Permalink

Chris Whitley, 1960-2005

RIP

Chris Whitley died Sunday, November 20, 2005, from lung cancer. Our condolences to all his friends and family - and our hearts in melancholy.

In 1991, Chris Whitley released his first CD, Living with the Law, with a splash that very few heard. I was quite young when it came out, and it was a revelation. Having weaned myself on blues records stolen from my father, but still being very much a child of the 80s, his amazing fusion of visceral blues, crunchy industrial backings, and layered lyrics made me think again about the places that music could go. But then, Whitley dropped off the face of the earth for four years.

1995 saw the release of his second CD, Din of Ecstasy, and I must say, after being made to wait for so long, I ran to my local purveyor of fine music to pick it up. And I was thrown for a loop. Unlike his first CD, Whitley's second was a crunchy, guitar-driven work that was more in line with German industrial than Muddy Waters. It not only gave me pause as to where he was going, it was also the death of his fledgling mainstream career.

With that CD, he became known as a musician who was interested only in following his own muse, an interest which was not conducive to his making it big. Yet at the same time, it was an interest that would make him one of the most unique songwriters of this age.

His third CD, Terra Incognita, found him looking for the middle ground between his first and second CDs. Songs such as "Immortal Blues" and "Alien" possessed the familiar feel of the songs from his first CD, while songs such as "Clear Blue Sky" provided a gentler window into the new directions he had started in. Going back to that second, initially off-putting CD, I found that it was just as good as his other efforts. I was a fan.

A string of releases had him going back to his roots, covering classic songs, and even working the most modern forms into his work. Some were hits, and some were misses, and with the release of Soft Dangerous Shores, Whitley finds a perfect amalgam of all his desires. Here he finds the delicate balance of the acoustic, blues-influenced work of his first CD, the modern sounds which influenced several of his follow-up records, and his always unique songwriting. Lines such as "Been abused but the medicine make it alright / Sustain your heart, protect your light" have the feel of any popular modern novel and are played perfectly against a backdrop of steel guitar and man-made beats, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The music of Chris Whitley is easy to wax poetic and pretentious about, but in the end it is much simpler than that. Ultimately, he strives to create music that strikes the heart first and the head second. While always difficult to say that everything he has done will be everybody's cup of tea, any music lover would be well served to check out Soft Dangerous Shores if only to experience the breadth of a truly innovative musician.

- Alex Duke

*              *               *

Chris Whitley is a highly prolific artist who has released a dozen albums over the course of about as many years (fourteen, to be exact) without the general public really noticing. His career is varied, his music ever-changing, but the core elements have stayed the same: his breathy falsetto voice and intricate guitar playing. Whitley's music is of a rare kind. Deeply rooted in folk and blues, at times infused with 1980s German electronic music, his songs engage the listener with melodies that often are a journey rather than merely a song. Add to this his visual, impressionistic, associative lyrics and you might realize why Whitley is not for everyone. Nonetheless, he is a great song craftsman, and when he doesn't experiment with dance beats or heavily distorted fuzz rock, he writes some of the most beautiful songs you will never have heard.

Whitley's debut album, Living with the Law, introduced his signature National steel guitar, establishing a sound that, despite Daniel Lanois's reverb-heavy production, became the sound most of his career would revolve around. It is the guitar featured on nearly all of his albums, and the one he invariably takes with him on the road. Although modestly successful, the problem with Living with the Law was that it failed to bring together two conflicting worlds: that of Whitley's soaked-in-blues songwriting and Lanois's radio-ready pop production. The follow-up, 1995's Din of Ecstasy, saw Whitley go his own way, resulting in an album that, to this day, is hard to like. It is distortion from beginning till end, the melodies all but buried underneath a layer of noise. Third time around, he got it right: he found the perfect balance between following his vision and making his music accessible to others. 1997's Terra Incognita, despite a few minor missteps, is a near perfect album. That year, however, Whitley was dropped by his label. Whatever the reason, seven years into his career it was clear that Whitley was not a money-making machine.

In December of '97, Whitley took a handful of new songs, set up a recorder in a relative's store in Vermont, and in one afternoon recorded what would later become Dirt Floor. Showcasing Whitley all by himself on guitar and banjo, accompanied by his ominous foot stomping, the album might well be his finest work to date. It was picked up by a small, independent label that would house him for the next three years. The subsequent years, however, were less productive and saw only the release of a live album and a collection of covers. In 2001, Whitley released an album on ATO (with ATO headman Dave Matthews singing backup vocals on one track). A new label required a new direction musically, and Rocket House, therefore, is an anomaly in Whitley's catalogue: it is a record on which he experiments with dance beats, drum computers, sampled loops. On tour that year, he was backed by a DJ. Although more successful than Living with the Law in terms of musical crossover, it was a slightly disappointing album after the brilliance of Dirt Floor and the ensuing long wait (a four-year hiatus is a long wait in Whitley's career). Setting up residence in Germany and returning to his former label, he released Hotel Vast Horizon in 2003, an album of subdued songs. The sparse arrangements on this album put Whitley's songwriting in the limelight again, and the result was generally thrilling. His new home certainly ignited something inside him, because that year, he re-recorded sixteen tracks from the albums he had released so far, in addition to a new album. Both- Weed and War Crime Blues - were released a year later. They seemed to mark an end-point. The question now was what Whitley would do, where he would go from here.

His new album is entitled Soft Dangerous Shores. Sonically, it is the direct follow-up to Rocket House. From the beginning notes it is clear, however, that Shores is more than an experiment. The inlay shows pictures of Dresden, and unavoidably, the first track revisits the horrors of the bombing of that city during World War II. The lyrics are chilling: "In Newtown today a virus confirmed / fairgrounds revoked pleasure gardens upturned / and the prayer complied and dropped where it burned / no one was spared and nothing was learned." Whitley was once called an urbane poet, and in a sense he is. His folk and blues is no longer that of muddy back roads and poorly lit bars - although those bars is where he still performs - but of life in the city, of disorientation and loneliness, of searching for a bond with someone else, more often than not a lover. In "City of Women," a dark, brooding piece that takes its time to establish a very delicate melody, Whitley plays with erotic imagery ("Everywhere I go is wet and red"). But like on the rest of the album, there is a sense of despair to the song. The relationship examined is not one of mere sexuality, it is an intricate symbiosis, fragile and demanding, oftentimes devastating.

Lyrically, Soft Dangerous Shores is stunning. Sometimes ghostly and Biblical ("White hoofs be rising from the sand / wild blood be passed from heart to hand / the weed will fly the cloud will land"), at other times exploring ("How long I be chased / 'fore the earth take me in / from the valley I taste / whole futures on her skin"), the album stands as a fine study of (sexual) love. Musically, however, the album does not match its lyrical content. The problem is not the melodies so much as the production. Whitley's guitar playing has been pushed to the background and the way has been made for electronics and sonic adventures. The melodies, already fairly complex, are all but lost to layers of drumbeats, drones, and reverb. Some songs hold their own despite the harangue of sounds, most notably the aforementioned opening track, "Fireroad," and closer "Breath of Shadows." Yet, most songs suffer from the fact that there is too much going on at the same time. If Whitley had chosen to pare the music down, to keep it bare, room would have opened up for his voice to step forward and for his lyrics to have their full effect. Instead, he has opted to create a mood piece. Mood is what this album is all about, and in that respect, it succeeds.

As it stands, Shores is hard to swallow whole. It is a demanding listen and one of the least accessible albums of Whitley's career. Yet, you can enjoy it for its impressive lyrics. And if you take the time to disentangle the melodies from the production, you'll find some jewels hiding underneath.

- Deniz Kuypers

Posted by arielleguy at 10:41 AM | Permalink

Monotonik is a family of netlabels that produces high-quality electronica. Being a netlabel, they do not sell their music, but release it exclusively on the internet under a creative commons license to be downloaded. Netlabels are quite possibly the best place to acquire music from the internet - legal and free.

It seems the music is better from netlabels than commercial labels due to the fact that they are not motivated by money, and, in turn, have the focus on the music, not potential mass acceptance and sales.

Netlabels are a recent addition to the music industry, using the creative commons copyright to very specifically indicate what the legal copying, distribution, and derivative capabilities are. Internet labels host music on the internet and promote free downloading of their music, as opposed to the traditional album making and selling process. Netlabel artists rarely make money on their music - their main goal is the integrity of music.

The Monotonik family has a few different aspects to it. There is the primary label, Monotonik, which is mostly idm and idm derivatives, with releases from 1999-2005 - and going strong. Then there is Mono211, which is noted as a breakbeat Monotonik sub label, with releases from 1999-2003 (this sub label seems to have slowed down after 2003). Next, there is Mono, a mod Monotonik sub label, with mod files from 1996-1997 (sounds a bit dated, but people dig it). Mod files are music files that were created on Amiga computers in the early stages of digital music. There is a strong internet cult following for mod files that keeps the music alive. Lastly, there is Monoraveik (mono rave ik) a special for Subi's 'break beat classics'. I am not quite sure who Subi is or what the music sounds like, but given the fact that Monotonik created a special sub label for Subi, it must be good.

Overall, Monotonik has a special place on the internet and in the music scene. All of the Monotonik releases have a nice little descriptions/reviews for each download, so you don't waste your time downloading some mystery music you have never heard before. I recommend downloading any or all of the Monotonik family's music, as you will notice there are certain quality standards that Monotonik maintains.

I have been a fan of Monotonik's music since Beak released their Amoral Mayor Earwig EP (mtk136). Since then I have downloaded several EPs from their site, and have yet to be disappointed. Some of my favorites are: Beak - Amoral Mayor Earwig EP (mtk136), Beak - El Hacedor EP (mtk150), Qeshi - The Eudemonic Homunculus (mtk154), and Bliss - Life On The Rooftop (mtk108). With Monotonik, there is hope for high-quality, free music on the internet.

Beak - El Hacedor (mtk150)

Beak is a netlabel artist on Monotonik, added to the netlabel family in early 2003.

While this 3-track EP is a very short compilation, it is just as sweet as it is short. El Hacedor is a very well polished mix of Spanish guitar and idm beats, with build-up and release that will send you in search for more. While Beak's last EP (Amoral Mayor Earwig EP (mtk136)) was an extremely wonderful EP, El Hacedor tops it, with more eloquent sounds and mixing. While the intense emotion conveyed by Beak's wonderful guitar and well-crafted beats brings forth new sensations on El Hacedor, beware not to get addicted, as there is nothing else like it—once you have heard all of Beak's music, you will jones for more. El Hacedor will no doubt be another treasure from Beak for the underground electronica heads to enjoy.

Track by track
1-Baileyi
Starts off with very Spanish-like guitar, leads into nice idm beats, finishes off into a nice little buzz.
2-The Maker
Nice, slowly finger-picked Spanish guitar, some nice complementing samples, very subtle beat, very airy feeling.
3- He Descended Into His Memory
Quick finger-picking, beats lead right in, nice tight rhythm, somewhat sudden end.

- Christopher R. Molaug

Contact: liquidsynthetics@hotmail.com
Liquid Synthetics can be found at: http://www.angelfire.com/indie/liquidsynthetics

Posted by arielleguy at 10:14 AM | Permalink

I will never stop buying records. Vinyl pretty much trumps all. It's imperfect, scratches easily, skips if you walk too hard across the floor, and gets bent in your old dank living room or basement or wherever you've forgotten about it. But then you pull it out and it's like being 13, only without the braces and without the dyed goth hair and hot pink lipstick.

That awesome sound of the needle hitting the black (or red or blue or purple or green), the red light that comes on when you click the knob on, that s-w-e-e-e-e-t unreal so babe scratch of the needle along the gloomy grooves. It’s moody, temperamental and everything music should be, always changing its sound, every listen different. You can hold it in your hands, touch it, hug it, kiss it, open and unwrap it, feel its dark body against yours. Records are dark because they are real, they are things, objects that become charged with the feelings and impressions of everything around them. They’re bloody and warm, and bring it all back. You can live inside a record, inside its large covers and black, shiny orb…it’s a planet, and when you gently place it on the soft mat, it comes home in a way few things do anymore.

When I moved from San Francisco to New York, my turntable got busted. I tried taking it apart, readjusting the big rubber band, putting the base back, hard, willing it to work. It just wouldn’t turn. It was gone.

It took me a whole year to replace it: a combination of moving to New York – being broke, sublet-living and then 275-square-foot (if I’m lucky) studio-living, and semi-jobless – and simple inertia (or, the depression of just having moved to New York). I struggled in my tiny apartment to listen to music, with its one ridiculous square room, and miasmic noise from all the other apartments in the building (I could hear this woman sneezing and her boyfriend coughing through the vent) and prayed that I would find an apartment that would allow me to return to my previous state of being able to enjoy music. I would sit around for countless hours wondering if my apartment was bigger than a jail cell, and wondering why I was shelling out a thousand-plus for it.

Then I found it. The Shangri-La, the answer to all my problems in New York. This amazing, beautiful paradise of an apartment – and I could afford it (I had by this time acquired a JOB, which entailed working 17 hours a day, but at least I had a place to go every day, and every night, and every day…). It was decorated in classic 70s style, with a gorgeous linoleum floor in the kitchen and light fixtures from the most aesthetically challenged era in our history. And it had a lovely, hardwood-floored center room, which was perfect.

I moved in in August of 2003, and the move pretty much ended the Dark Days of my first year in New York. The move to the livable apartment gave me, pretty much, well, the will to actually live. Don’t let anyone tell you moving to New York won’t kill you. It will, but then, you’ll be reborn in a way you never thought possible, and it is all worth it.

So, for the next period of time, I became obsessed with decorating my apartment, but specifically, with regard to setting up a fine place to listen to music – and especially, my old records, which had sat, unplayed and unloved, in a dingy cardboard box that said, U-Haul, Go U-Haul! Every single Bowie, Zeppelin, and Sabbath album - along with Mama Cass, Appetite for Destruction, Nothing's Shocking and some heart-kept treasures from the 80s, which I’ll keep to myself, was lonely. And I did it – I finally purchased a new turntable. A beautiful, shiny Stanton, complete with its lovely landing pad, and its scrawled and swirly “Stanton,” white script on black felt. And with it, and for it, the first new records I bought: Extended Revelations for the Psychic Weaklings of the Western Civilization and Welcome to the Infant Freebase, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, and five beautiful John Coltrane albums. And I have continued to feed it with more records, year after year.

That is how the name for the magazine came to be – in my living room, I have my Stanton, my “The Man Who Fell To Earth” poster, an Aladdin Sane poster, a lava lamp, a blue Tibetan wall hanging and my pirate and skull beads from New Orleans, and my sweet, sweet record collection – and two blue light bulbs in the fabulous fake crystal chandelier hanging down, over this blessed of all blessed rooms.

Posted by arielleguy at 07:22 PM | Permalink

If you are not familiar with Phil Elverum, he is Mount Eerie and has been The Microphones (K Records). He also puts out his own records now under the label P.W. Elverum & Sun. I could get pretty long-winded about this record because it really touched me with its vulnerable tones. So if you don't feel like reading all this, just know that this album is very unique and might give you chills.

Usually, Elverum records with all sorts of his Washington State friends (Mirah, Karl Blau, Little Wings) in huge, booming cacophonies of sound or, alternately, quiet, sentimental ballads. On No Flashlight , Phil is basically on his own with only a bit of musical assistance from Genevieve Elverum (his bride?).

The first Mount Eerie record was obfuscation. It was hard to see the mountain (chaotic drums and dense lyrics) and the fog (silence) made the path more difficult. On No Flashlight, Phil Elverum has graciously provided a map for his audience. His songs are lessons - some are about Phil's music and the more philosophical ones are about living/dying/perception. This trail map is in the form of his music but also in the possibly largest record art ever (5 feet by 3.5 feet) included with the LP that has explanations of the songs, lyrics, photos, bibliography, recommended reading notes, poems, with a summary, on one side, and an inky painting by Phil, on the other side, of a lone person under a foggy mountain.

If the first Mount Eerie was Phil's ascent up the mountain and his attempted retreat away from "the modern world" by going the way of the mystic hermit to live in a cabin in Norway, then No Flashlight is his descent from the mountain, having learned that it is not necessary to be so romantic and isolated to experience/live in the world. It's like he is saying that the attempted escape was silly and futile ("How?"). Really, it seems he found some of what he was looking for and came back to record this album with a most positive attitude.

Phil's singing and drumming and occasionally his guitar playing are where he really shines and his music has always flowed deep into my brain and resonated there like a bell ringing low and long. Where his other albums could often be enigmatic, this one is simple and straightforward in its gentle poetry.

The album starts with a disclaimer song, "I Know No One," acknowledging that, with conversation, there will always be misunderstanding but it's okay, we realize it and go on. I know I have misunderstood songs that Phil has sung but I will try anyway to tell you how I heard this album and why I think you should probably hear it too. This is where we start, with Phil's sweet voice in our ear. It continues to the real album with "I Hold Nothing," about the journey from day to night. This is the gate song, with living room rhythms of acoustic guitar, drums, and piano. The album is about the loneliness of feeling and uses the metaphor of the night for the interconnectedness of all experience. The songs are about night and ways to understand and live in the night.

Bats are a recurring image and Phil tells us in his notes that they sing a song we can't hear but their song welcomes the night like birds in the dawn and they need no light to explore the mysterious world of the dark. Unusual for Phil, the songs don't repeat the choruses over and over and create sing-alongs; here, they observe or speak and then end and the music is percussive and comforting with only "The Moan" and "The Universe is Shown" having that past Microphones' booming, clashing, powerful sound. The drums throughout the album are like chimes and tree branches in the wind, heartbeats.

One of the strongest themes is about how, in the night, we lose our shape and some of our perceptions shut down until we are left being part of the engulfing darkness and realizing that all there is is everything, which is really nothing in some ways and also it is just our nature, stripped bare. We think what we see is the world, but there is an invisible world that sometimes pokes through - like in the night, when we can feel without dividing things up with our eyes into "us and them." Phil builds up to this feeling with songs like "2 Lakes" and "2 Mountains," which are about the things we can see and the others, which are always there but we don't consciously think about. He gives the example of our "dark skeletons that reveal themselves in teeth and fingernails." These are old buddhist pearls but he polishes them and reminds us that these invisible things have influence: there is no inside or outside. We put food in our mouths from the earth and it becomes us, the earth grows dark and we go into the night's mouth and become part of it.

We go on a journey through the album from loneliness and confusion to realizing there is no way to hide from the world and, when you decide to participate in living, you can't do that by denying that this world of computers and cities and trash is not part of what makes the world our world. Beauty and sadness are everywhere, but the fear of death (metaphor of the night) is common. We can be overwhelmed by this but, one day, we ask, like Phil does: what do you do once you "admit this might be the world where I belong?" He decides to come back to the cities, accept that misunderstanding and hypocrisy are inevitable and still sing his songs for everyone anyway. This is part of the process of transforming angst to comforting action, like making songs. This music is dark, but sweet, gentle, but forceful. These words are not the music. The thing is not our perception but the thing. This record thing might make you feel better.

P.S. Phil already released another album, 11 Old Songs of Mount Eerie, with the primary instrument used being an old Casio keyboard.

P.S.S. This album would make a great companion to reading John Porcellino's mini-comics "King Cat."

Track Listing:
1. I Know No One
2. I Hold Nothing
3. The Moan
4. In the Bat's Mouth
5. No Inside, No Out
6. 2 Lakes
7. Stop Singing
8. No Flashlight
9. 2 Mountains
10. The Air in the Morning
11. The Universe is Shown
12. What?
13. How?
14. No Flashlight
15. 2 Moons

- Joe Martinez

Posted by arielleguy at 06:42 PM | Permalink

As I was watching an Of Montreal show in Los Angeles some months ago, I was inspired with a concept for a film. A space rock opera, wherein groovy interstellar musicians flew their astral bodies around distant solar systems in search of the Eternal Vibration that creates colorful harmonious orgies of reality.

In this daydream, Brian Eno was the original creator of this Sound, kind of like Philip K. Dick's VALIS entity (I know it's monotheistic but it was just a nerdy fantasy). He was the star of stars and the ancestor of all the spacey rock/jazz/electronic music out there. Of course, this is an exaggeration but he was and is damn inspirational even when his work is less than perfect.

His new album is his first in record in over 20 years to have singing on all tracks (not all the voices his). It is almost like an updated version of Eno's Nerve Net from 1992. Eno has found his voice again and it is clear and confident on Another Day on Earth. The cover photo of a Chinese market and the title correspond with the songs, suggesting a way to find beauty in the mundane. It is a friendly and humble album with subdued beats and synthetic drones, but don't think it is just one of his infamous ambient albums with vocals laid on top. It bears little resemblance to his 70s glam energy. These are certainly "songs" and they stick in your inner ear and, later, you will find them delicately coming out of your mouth in quiet, book-reading moments. This is true especially for the excellent opening track, "This": an optimistic reverie on life, which is poppy but has a bit of the classic Eno pitch-shifting vocals that dominated his early rock masterpieces like Here Come the Warm Jets. Even though I obviously am a great fan of Eno, I admit my first impressions of this album were impatient and I thought some of the songs were cheesy and overly clean. Like many of his works, though, it just took some time to appreciate this new phase of Eno's progression.

Eno's eyes see far beyond this time and his ears hear things that can be expressed only as otherworldly. Despite the clarity of the singing, the album is meditative and creates trance-like loops that stop perfectly short of becoming redundant. Many of the songs seem to be about globalization and unity. However, I couldn’t glean a political stance from the ghostly songs that seem more about global time than space. Some tracks have the sexy, sweet vocal quality of David Bowie, while others are digitally modified into octave-changing theremin-like harmonies. Most of the songs are serene and mature gemstones, with a few tracks like "How Many Worlds" being more whimsical - ballads for retiring space junkies trying to calm their nerves. "Bone Bomb," the last track, is a bittersweet item, with creepy female vocals by Aylie Cooke, about the peace that comes from dying after so many years of living through war.

While listening to Another Day on Earth, you may want to lie on the carpet and look up. Most people rarely look up. Up is the direction where many mythologies have placed the home of divine mysteries. Eno's aquatic harmonies let your body sink and the bass becomes gravitational. Your mind will follow your eyes. It is hypnotic music for getting metaphysical-like. I don't buy into the whole duality of mind/body or that up is holy and down is hell, but the music sounds more floaty and ethereal than subterranean. For fans, this is a consistent and pleasing record and, for Eno virgins, this might be a good place to start, working backwards into his ambient, thinking music and then forward to his glitter rock operas. I'm just thankful Eno is still as prolific as ever.

Track Listing:
1. This
2. And Then So Clear
3. A Long Way Down
4. Going Unconscious
5. Caught Between
6. Passing Over
7. How Many Worlds
8. Bottomliners
9. Just Another Day
10. Under
11. Bone Bomb

- Joe Martinez

Posted by arielleguy at 05:28 PM | Permalink

5 Poems

canine couture

i've stopped trusting
the beginnings of books
overwhelmed by quality
and quantity because you
know tonight's another
style another strip-
tease across the street
attracting only the more
measured types so full
of macho bluster like
the culprit caught stealing
a dachshund from that
pet shop window on
11th street a body
dangling from his hip.

facially speaking

in 1986 i look like a man. with a bowl cut and corduroy legs. it's hard to be tall. sturdy, mom says. at 7. it's hard to understand the difference between jaclyn and seth. between meredith and jarett. sweatsuits were so in. even the jackets came closed.

sometimes i'm afraid to lift my arm. to feel the crease of skin slide over my outstretched elbow. jordan klein says i have grandma arms. but my flesh looks so untransparent. barely any veins. it takes a long time to draw blood at the allergist. jennifer tam has arms like needles. so utilitarian. without excess.

in mr. motechin's class i am self conscious. i need to go. to leave. but it is hard to raise a hand when there are so many chameleons in sight. i want to take one home. name him floyd. green stretch pants turn black. seth's mom finds a dead lizard in his closet. i try to take a ferret home.

there's something about a lack of backbone. a certain flexibility. control. like using tweezers instead of a razor. my grandma used to draw her eyebrows on. i always knew when she was in a bad mood. diagonally speaking.

launderama

for corner pharmaceutical mumbles
for happy passenger recycling
for paper information greetings
for sushi expert video aids
for piccolo décor zone
for medical police service tolls
for many word lotto
for happen optical tavern
for lyric marble noodles
for buy liquors vintage now
for push ambient boxes what
for first frontier then center
for healing fancy word wounds
for still basics and travel
for petit hardware and iron cuts
for more industry for science
for wanted olympic spy-ware
for rare balms more mercury
for green reward halls
for futures of prohibited folding

proper business phone ethics

to make heads
and tails
only know the parts
you work on.

speak in third
person. grammatically
challenged in this vast
undifferentiated sea
of questions that aren't
that difficult. untimely.

remember. people want
to talk to a person. up
then at. and we are
an indulgent organization.
crafty at jargonification.

don't even say
"sure." manage up.
create a delightful
interlude. welcome
in august. backwards.
impossible in june.

grammatology
for anthony robinson

i want sentences. to make sense.
in the post post post structuralist way.
want barbie to topple. the way she
should. want my hands to age.
the redness to be arthritis not
frostbite. want to use apostrophes
as commas because nothing.
is that possessive. i used to hoard
old sneakers. a kid with candy
in the closet. now i fill trash bags
with clothes that fit. i like this
showing. like you in all
your languages. body. bullets.
paragraphenalia. today i think.
waist. want. put on. my cargo
shorts and strut between
couch and computer. between
balance and overdrawn.
i feel like a checkbook
missing monthly interest.
i know it's there. acquired.
never met. i never thought
about barbells. about piercing
my nipples. the ringlets small.
i miss. i am miss. admit to singular.
can't conjugate smitten. alone.

Erica Kaufman is originally from Bloomington, Indiana, but if you ask her she will claim to be a New York native. That is where she lives and has a few jobs and co-curates the belladonna reading series/small press. Erica is the author of from the two coat syndrome (self-published) and the kickboxer suite (boog literature, 2004). Her poems can also be found in Puppyflowers, Painted Bride Quarterly, Bombay Gin, The Mississippi Review, among other places. She likes dogs and mild weather.

Posted by arielleguy at 03:18 PM | Permalink

5 Poems

At this moment

"I realized that I did not know anything for certain"
Tadeusz Borowski
1922-1951

And at this moment I do not know anything for certain:
Hundreds of thousands of bodies wash to shore,
A volcanic eruption at sea submerges twenty islands,
forest fires leave piles of charred redwood trees,
a glacier sails away, carrying a family of polar bears.
Layers of stars get entangled in strings, shaking them off
into a network of milky ways.
The St. John River flows away from the Bay of Fundy.
Cars go back on Magnetic Hill.

The creek in my backyard is as huge as the Nile or the Amazon
and is still polishing pebbles.
Mallards fly over.
The birch tree splits, dies and
falls into the water.

The torn balloon was once the sky dome.
The yellow and red balls left by little Lilly
contain the code for future universes.

Evening touches morning.
Night swallows high noon.

A door opens in the basement ceiling,
goes up to visit the attic.

Advantages

Being buried under an ancient olive tree
has its advantages:
Not ever being bothered by distant relatives.
Pleasant shade at all times.
Some of the tree's wisdom may be
rubbing off on me.
Inspiring view of the watermelon and the wheat fields,
being intoxicated by the fragrance
of the citrus groves in the fall.
Resident scorpions scratching my back.
A remote possibility it will be mistaken
for a holy sheikh tomb encouraging pilgrimages.

Pizza

A ghastly pink beach.
Polka dots mushrooms sprout,
grow shells, stick out tongues

Knock, knock, knock down shells.
Squirt with greenish goo.
Here you are, You wanted gravy. Parasite!
Ants with head flashlights
march quickly between mushrooms rows.
"looking for your lost tribe?"
Blue crystal parachute land on the beach
accompanied by angelic music.
God's well modulated voice:
Organic peanuts, organic peanuts.
No?
O.K.
Anyone for pizza?

Lightseeds

For Salvador Dali and Pieta

Roots are confidently burrowing deep.
Moist and excited they order
the stem to straighten.
The huge sunflower
lifts its head stretching and yawning.
Dark seeds tremble in tension and anticipation,
Inner glow comes up from the dark earth, bathes them,
illuminates the sunflower crown.
It is swimming in light.
Day and night, the seeds blissfully dream
in a bed of delight, in harmonized breath.

Till one moves, uncomfortably beckoned by sky signals,
All seeds stir.
One by one, they shoot out, seeking
hidden dark discs in the skies,
tracking them, chasing them, tricking them into submission.
Penetrating them, the seeds linger inside
until the discs stretch, enlarge,
in a joyful flight into orbit,
become sun discs, colliding with each other playfully.
They cross heavy curtains of dead stars,
disappear behind them
form a bell quire,
ringing through veils.
Wrapped in a shiny blanket of fog
they acquire comet tails.

Looking into the vast extinguished spaces
They are falling fast.
Their blood freezes.

Overcome by yearning and longing
to their luminoussunflower mother,
they tear the walls of the sun discs,
leaving them bleeding and dark.
Wounded seeds make their way
through fierce galaxies and
mountainous planets,
consumed by dragon meteors, hissing flames.
Except one who desperately continues the impossible journey back to his
Luminoussunflower mother.

Our eyes register the light of dead stars
Andre Schwartz Bart "The last of the just"

Our eyes register the light of dead stars.
One of them dubbed NT 2248 by astronomers
was our warm home
where pale grasses soared to red rooftops
where flowers blossomed on our windowsills
where we nestled our dreams.

The planet was the origin of the great exodus
521,000,000 years ago.
We were not aware or warned that
we violated one of the seven hundred twenty three injunctions.
Kicked out by the whim of a disgruntled locksmith named Job.

We traveled with turtle houses on our backs
across the vast expanses of shadow holes,
crossed moon galaxies,
cut by star shards,
shoved into snowy sky caves,
charred by comet tails.

Torn skinned, dumped on a planet of flat roofs,
plastic covers, fake flowers, shuttered windows,
strapped to metal chairs
taped to walls,
stuffed into monosyllabic cells:

Br-ea-th

Br-ea-th

S-T-A-R

Posted by arielleguy at 03:08 PM | Permalink

3 Poems

Blazon Star

edgy in your edginess
and on a spotted vale
empty in the outer sky
and washed in seaweed shale
heavenly and hard to eat
and ever ready green
going toward a catomine
a horse that runs praline
plunked down on the
mountaintops
from high up in the rue
reddened by an autumn
patch of mustard seeds
that brood
broadly based in
earthen muck
and modeled on a vale
ever going happy home
to sing a golden scale.

Geography Sonnet

When the news from Africa
is that we're in London
and are moving to Madrid
O Madrid, you're not New York
and I have never been to Syria
which is near the border of Iraq
how happy I am, Great Wall of China
and bank vaults of Fort Knox
there's no place like home, in Kansas
or a city like San Francisco
just down-sea from Japan,
I grew up outside Buffalo
and my people are from France,
Charlegmagnic, dark as Mars.

Zero Onset

an eagle added attaboy ongoing outboard oak
of after agile april airs in inner age awoke
apparent oaten apple arcs, amazing amish ax
and undulating ache of air in Aeschylus attacks
o agitation angrily, o okra ocracoke
and after orange onset ilk updated on an arch
all-knowing error out of earth, o undulate aardvark
applicable of often oars, o oar ashore ashore
antagonistic afterburn, appalling anvil adze
adversity, ambivalence, androgynous aloe
astrology all edible, of aging update om
and opening and opening, unpacked allowed aroam
authentic arching anarchist, allowance all awry
an afternoon, Albanian, unurgent and espied.

Lisa Jarnot is the author of three full-length collections of poetry including Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions. Chicago). She is currently completing a biography of the San Francisco poet, Robert Duncan, which will be published by University of California Press in 2006. She lives in New York City and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Brooklyn College.

Posted by arielleguy at 02:53 PM | Permalink

Moraines

Fountain Moraine

I wear an advertisement for my best self
across my chest, a gold tuba wails against
the whimwham of the moon, a reunited table
and chair pull out a strand of hair, fresh
as the string of a butterfly. Glorious cinemas
entertain the prefight roosters, fragrant leaves
hiding the smell of humbugging elixirs, blossoming
trash cans trashing the piazza, a spirit of a new
ideal flying beyond our heads, the yearning
parade growing rudimentary leaves, heliotropic,
corporeal, sideways as a love letter or the after-
effects of a fistfight in a movie, open loonytoon
automatic time/space charade as if a photograph
of a naked gun is more opaque than the waning
firetruck growling through the freed slave district.
*
It is not a sign (a mark of dissolve) but a nowhere.

Our nowhere. Against stillness and chaos.

The nowhere of a photograph of a star.

The quiet of a shoelace. The beginning of an old stillness.

Not unlike a paper tear glued to a cheek.

Not unlike a beach

where we sit and imagine ourselves

as ourselves. Not unlike a newspaper

swallowed by a pink-tinted whale.

No. Yes. No. The crackling.

The crackling of serious stars.

*
I sobbed and was unsold or so I claimed.
The reasons were fraught with do-little bells,
isolated frequencies, benign widgets and monthly
visits to the ontology doctor who would watch me
in my sleep, and whisper the details of crumpled
post-it notes in my ear.
There was an intimacy to this,
his warnings balanced beside
my blushing cheek, the promise
of shared truth rubbed
on my chest, thick as oil.

Before Thinking Moraine

It was the idea of thinking
more than any particular thought
that drew me to the empty room.

An awkward greenness hung over everything those days.

Two spiders alternated
waves.

**

All the water glasses line up.

This means I am an art student and a classmate is telling me about a forgotten ancient
Asian language in which the words for colors are named for rocks.

There are an infinite variety of rock types, so each shade of color has its own distinct
name: indisputable, known, clear.

Misunderstanding can never occur because each color word meaning is exact.

Hearing this story, I feel an almost religious rush: my mind contracts and expands.

Later, the other student finds the original genera of rocks and carves them into a
series of identically shaped roses. Under each flower, she makes a sign with a
translation of its forgotten name.

I try to take the markers down.

**

I can't hear the edges slipping,

can't say where the ocean

might end and filled thimble begin.

If there is a "meaning" in the area,

I feel oddly despondent as if only I should understand

the subtext of each seltzer bubble in the glass.

True glory?
Damn sunrise--

Partial Escapist Moraine
(For Noelle)

Let's pretend we're on a trip.
Rip out the moldy sky,
package our emotions into even intervals
so the jury will have no doubt about our business
acumen. No need to send another secret greeting
to the corporate Santa or an industrial fruitcake
to the temp. agency. Don't worry about our poetry lessons.
They'll be kept private; our pronouncements
wrapped in the silk of the president's stolen panties, a pack
of intellectual wolves steering the boat
through the afternoon's amusement ride, your husband,
that sweet animal, no longer trapped under death's shield.

You, no longer sad.

*

I am sorry I can't help you today.
I should be ashamed. You know
I pray to my atheist god to make me ashamed, to be a train,
to take you away, a joy train,
unashamed, light
as the train
that separates the sun's cells
as they gleam
the lights in your name more awake
than this death conglomerate was ever asleep.

*

moraine (noun):

A mound, ridge or ground covering of unsorted debris, deposited by the melting away of a glacier.

- Geology Dictionary

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of two books of poetry published by Hanging Loose Press: Freud in Brooklyn (2000) and Ugh Ugh Ocean (2003). Her third book Moraine is forthcoming in 2006. New poems can be found in forthcoming issues of Court Green, American Letters and Commentary and New York Quarterly. She lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Posted by arielleguy at 02:00 PM | Permalink

4 Poems

Bird Song

Another day beforeThe NextWarRain likely

MockingbirdTunes Up

Potable waterNot luck

HelpSome

Picnic These memorial horizons

Promised translucent

Now old thought

In young clothes

Closed to them

All those in heaven

Shake their heads

Especially the collaterally

DamagedHeadless Buddhas

Shake whatever they can

The Pope shakes his finger he's

God's lawyer and his client is

Dead This war's got a IIAfter itA child of 13

Will see it twice

Last time

During potty trainingOh young recruits

Always be wary of a man

Named for his fatherNaming maims


Shoes to fillFill 'er up quick

Let us send our potatoes

Out to be mashed

Before duct tape shuts

Our million dollar bashAnd we can't

EatThe fresh and meatyResultOf every war

And don't forget

To seal the door

Cluster Theories

fresh water ~~~~~~~~~~~~a chunk off the icy dicey

Emigre Martians
Now American
Politicians
Everything's a clue

but where's the mystery?

Historyantique mediumno more owned

by the winnerthat sinnerand his

Stupidly regular dinners

Try to find
Your true
Home

What if time
Flowed backward
Unreading each word

Color lends weight to
Weightlessness
Now red's the new

Dark matter
A repulsive force
On large scales

And those huge clusters
Refusing
To behave

When my country looks
Forward it goes drawkcab
Check out the photo
With Rover's rear
End
Landed part of the content

Let us count the continents
And the incontinents
Soon to roam The Last Frontier

And loaf meatly on its astro-turf

Like take-out?
Ready for zip codes and zoning?

Stuff ads moaning girls say you need?
Last call at the Hotsy Totsy Club

Pass me a glass of water
Call if you want to go up

If we don't answer, we're either on another line

Or helping somebody out the window

Did you say laughs have syllables?

Why be alone when you can be impulsive

Macy's now sells
Tediomatics

Slices dices chops tedium into smithereens
Homeboys and girls

New pearls
Wanna wear your country's
Real neck on your sleeve

So easy to flag you
Down on my planet



Face Value

All night the wind blows horizontal rain, whipping the facade. If one were walking against this torrent, one would have to bend to it, to protect one's face. Palm trees, bamboo know what to do. Humans stay in their beds, prone to excitement. In an earthquake, a woman hid under her pillow. The tremor settled down, safety returned, why should she face it. Each airport van incites surprise. One would open the door and the deceased, now undead, would stand with suitcase in hand, all face. Weapons of doubt destroyed and now peace reigns. Instead, a man with spit in his beard, drives up in a rusty corvette for a chat. Not the face that launched a thousand rowboats down a merrily merrily merrily. Rain begins again precipitously, falling in a vertical fashion. Why do people get the face they deserve? Why not another face that someone else deserves? One's face could be mistakenly placed on a body that didn't belong with it. After a facial, the surface is red, inflamed from the fussing. Put the paper face up or down, one can never remember, these machines, each requiring a different position. Still again, now sun. In profile beautiful, one side belying the other, two-faced. Nothing in that face reveals anything other than itself. Perhaps the eyes reveal the soul perhaps not, perhaps the soul is under construction. Countries engage in face-offs. One goes about one's business without a face. A face is for others to view.

The Young Keep Dying Abroad and At Home

Tired anemone shoots last bloom
Neither lassitude nor industry
Impress the machinery
Of neat hedges & Kalashnikovs
Hand over those scissors to cut the hair
Of graves one strand at a time
Something blazing some city razed no this
Fatigue has a name abhor dolor honor
Push brooms galore sap soaked leaves
The inevitable debris of time gum
Wrappers quarters to account for
Inflation petrified fish bone so
Far from the sea a 9 mm shell
And thee fair garden so far from hell.

Gloria Frym is a poet and fiction writer. Her last book of poems, Homeless At Home, won an American Book Award. She is the author of two critically acclaimed collections of short stories, Distance No Object and How I Learned, as well as several volumes of poetry, and articles on photography and other visual media. She teaches at California College of the Arts in the Bay Area. A new book, Solution Simulacra is forthcoming in 2006.

Posted by arielleguy at 10:06 AM | Permalink

One thing is immediately clear when listening to The Most Serene Republic's debut album, Underwater Cinematographer: these guys have tried very hard to write some original songs.

After an instrumental, one-and-a-half-minute opener, the first real song, "Content Was Always My Favorite Color," literally assails the listener with one hook after another. The last time a song contained this many rhythm changes was on Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle. The track starts off somewhat grandiose: synthesizer, drumbeat, three vocal lines. One minute into the song, the music fades, making room for what will prove itself to be one of Republic's favorite sounds: handclaps. The void is quickly filled with the frantic strumming of a guitar, exploding drums, and a nervous piano line. Before the song is over, there will be another change, during which a distorted guitar and the synthesizer make their reappearance. Disorienting? Somewhat, yes. Over the top? Definitely. But it also happens to be an effective introduction to what is to come.

The second song, "(Oh) God," is more straightforward. Trying less hard than the first song, "(Oh) God" hits home because of its simple yet heart-tugging lyrics and its performance. When vocalist Adrian Jewett cries out "Oh my God," it is somehow one of the most exhilarating moments you will have heard all year. "The Protagonist" slows down midway in the form of an erratic and long-stretched solo. "Proposition 61" features more handclaps, whereas "Where Cedar Nouns and Adverbs Walk," after nicking a line from "Hey, Jude," ends with the entire band chanting, "I think we all know the words."

This first half of the record is immediately rewarding. It's unpredictable and keeps the listener on his or her feet. Things start to go wrong, however, with "In Places, Empty Spaces." The song features a very pretty melody, interspersed with little bleeps, but some twenty-five minutes into the album, Jewett's cutesy lyrics ("I've got a box of nice crayons / Pick a color and it's yours") and his thin-as-ice vocals, which in some songs get all but lost in the mix, start to become wearisome. Constant change, of course, is a form of repetition as well. Republic's approach to songwriting eventually becomes more like a gimmick rather than a sincere effort: they deliver one tempo change after another, pianos-on-steroids, songs featuring three interweaving vocal lines. The two shortest tracks on the album, "Relative's Eyes" and "King of No One," are placed at the end, and they're both utterly forgettable. They are only somewhat redeemed by the closing track, "You're a Loose Cannon, McArthur."

The first six tracks on Underwater Cinematographer would have made an excellent EP. As an album, however, it falls flat because, once you've heard the first few tracks and you're familiar with the type of songs this band writes, there really isn't anything different about the rest of the album. As a debut album, it's partially successful, because it shows a young band full of exuberance and a love for playing music. For a follow-up album, maybe they'll tone down and take the time to develop their melodies. We should hope that they haven't used up all their hooks.

- Deniz Kuypers

Posted by arielleguy at 06:44 AM | Permalink