One book a week will be my pace for 2006. I see a lot of people talking about setting goals of 50 books a year. That sounds like a lot of books. A book a week is more, but it’s broken into a time span I understand. I know I can do it, and it’s less than half my pace in college.
Besides, I’ve never been much of a goal setter; doing what I set out to do always leaves me feeling empty.
I’ll be posting book reports as I go.
Right off, I should point out that I didn’t actually end up seeing Deerhoof, though I am really bummed about it. I probably shouldn’t have gone out at all that night, since I was sort of sick, but I thought I would be OK. Alas, after the many opening acts, I just couldn’t stand up any longer, which was doubly too bad because I think I would have really enjoyed Deerhoof, and I really really didn’t like any of the opening acts.
The Bostonist and Herald (The Herald reviews indie rock shows?) reviews were way, way too generous. Terri has a fuller rundown, with her usual great pictures, and a more positive attitude than I about the whole enterprise. So I won’t duplicate what she writes, but just fill in some pot shots. L’Ocelle Mare was cut from the cloth of the Charlie Parker of the Recorder who plays in the Central and Harvard T stations: impossible for me to tell if he was some kind of musical genius or just some strange guy strumming tunelessly with a pained expression, until he’d stop and smile to let you know the song was over. The Martha Colburn films might have impressed me if I didn’t remember a time when MTV played videos and had that sort of experimental filmmaking edge; accompanying several films was music by Jad Fair, who I’ve never had much use for. I know Le Ton Mite was very self-consciously dorky and childlike and that was part of the schtick, but man, was he just… wrong. When he abandoned his guitar and sang his “remix” (a capella) of a song he called “Damn, you people are fine; some of you gonna make love tonight”, I just lost it. I couldn’t stop laughing and crying; maybe it was the illness, but I just couldn’t believe what was happening was happening. And then, just when you thought it couldn’t get worse… a dance troupe came out and cleared a patch in front of the stage at the Middle East. I have to admit that I liked them a bit, but as the Bostonist review remarks, it was sort of like a Laurie Anderson rip off.
Now, as anyone who’s been willing to sit through my recent tirades against rock shows may surmise, I think that the whole thing needs a bit of an injection of … something. So I’m sympathetic to the general enterprise of bringing a sort of wacky and multi-faceted and arty carnival atmosphere into rock venues. But this wasn’t it.
The Bostonist and Herald reviews seem to imply that the crowd was into it, but that’s not the impression I got. I could definitely hear a lot of mutinous people around me, and people were just sort of talking during most of the opening acts. Part of that could have been that they were quiet– I can’t think of another show where the sound from the Middle East upstairs was leaking into the Middle East downstairs (and not vice versa).
Terri has just called me a negative vibe merchant, but I’m going to post this anyway.
8. Sylvia Scarlett
9. Crumpy the hand puppet
… this would be its track listing.
After dinner at Cambridge Common with Editrix and Summervillain, Saturday night we went to see Kevin’s band The Blind King at their CD release party at the Lizard Lounge. I liked them a lot; they set up a coffee table (with flowers, carafes of tea, and a bottle of San Pelligrino which no one drank that I observed) and sat in a circle around it, which gave everything a relaxed, rehearsal feel. They have a large membership, and sound a bit like a very relaxed Calexico with the country elements emphasized.
Why did I wait so long to see a show at the Lizard Lounge? Not sure. While Miss Tess was playing their set as we came in, I was briefly fooled into thinking I was in that alternate reality in which Rock never happened that I sometimes long for, where there are night clubs, where people in feather boas and sunglasses sing jazzy songs to the beat of wire brushed drums and an upright bass.
Alas, we found out too late that Terri’s camera was not charged, so no photographic evidence of the whole thing for you.
Went to see The Passenger at the Brattle tonight. The only other Anotnioni film I’ve seen was Blow Up; The Passenger made me feel much the same way: it’s a great film, masterfully made, it will stick with me, but I don’t really share an obsession with the issues he’s dealing with. It’s all about identity, and seeing, and reality, and truth, and escape. Oh, and sports cars. I think I prefer The Passenger. All the heady intellectual stuff came more organically from the plot and characters; Blow Up puts it backwards, and everything feels staged to get some ideas across. It was nice to see so much of Barcelona in 1973. One scene between Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider takes place on the roof of La Pedreira, apparently before it was museummified, because there were clothes hanging on a line and people living in one of the apartments. Can’t imagine that happening now. And, hey, Jack Nicholson was good back in the 70’s before he became “Jack Nicholson”, wasn’t he?
Currently? I am sitting on the couch with Suki on my lap (purring and occasionally sinking a claw into my chest out of happiness) with Storefront Hitchcock on in the background, just to hear “You and Oblivion”, with a nightcap of Maker’s Mark.
Terri’s got a brand new blog. Switching to WordPress should mean less comment spam. Plus, she gets her own spiffy domain name. And a sassy background.
The Brattle email-only newsletter notes the following:
More big thanks go out to The Volcano Suns and Yo La Tengo who are contributing portions of ticket sales from concerts held last week to the Brattle’s campaign!
Unfortunately, their email newsletter is not reproduced online, so no linkery for you. I signed up for it last week, after I learned that despite my desire to help the Brattle, I somehow missed that there was a Twin Peaks watch-a-thon in early december that I could have signed up for!
Anyway, the Yo La Tengo schedule confirms it, and apparently, another beneficiary of that Hanukkah show was the Pittsburgh Filmmakers, where I took a one-friday-a-month internship during my senior year in high school. I had no real interest in being a filmmaker, but it was free, it was fun, I got to hang out in Oakland one Friday a month instead of going to school, and I had the occasionally wacky adventure. I don’t think I even bothered to pick up my last 8mm film from the processing lab.
“How is the Brattle doing, anyway?”, you ask. There was a Globe story last week with the update. Not as bad as the worst case, not as good as the best case. Maybe I’ll try to have some birthday festivities there next month.
