From Last Train to Jakarta (John Darnielle(Mr. Mountain Goats)’s blog):

…your content can be 100% seen-it/heard-it nothing-new and you can still come off like a shiny new quarter if your writing is good enough. I’m bourgeois, right: in my life, knowing whether somebody is a snitch or not has exactly zero practical applications, and I only vaguely care on principle: at the end of the day, people protect their own asses, that’s not exactly news. But when Scarface hates on a snitch, his tone is so measured but passionate and the writing so tight that I’m able to share his outrage, even though for all practical purposes he might as well be calling out the guy who fucked up his topiary or something: my level of real-life engagement is about the same. That’s what good writing is about, as far as I’m concerned - drawing things so vividly that you can make people give a shit about stuff they needn’t actually even know about.

Having a not-so-secret on-again off-again thing for Salt-n-Pepa over the years, I had to watch the first few episodes of their new eponymous reality show on VH1. I watched episodes 2 and 3 late last night, and this morning I was thinking that it’s all so staged and bogus that I probably wouldn’t watch any more.

But then, how exciting is it that Spinderella’s coming back in episode 4? There’s no way I’m not watching that.

You are so crafty, VH1, and I am so hooked.

Except, imagine “Country Roads” by John Denver instead of Camera Obscura.

My itch for visceral musical experiences that don’t involve amplification or electricity or recording technology or guitars got a great big ol’ scratch this weekend at the Honk! festival. I can’t even try to explain what the whole Honk! thing is about, so if you want words, you should check out their website.



Terri astutely pointed out that this is the only thing we’ve ever seen in the United States that approaches what the street festivals we’ve been to in Barcelona are like. There are probably more differences than similarities, and La Merce is on a much bigger scale and there are more different kinds of things going on. But they both are sort of these autumn things that happen in the street, where there’s drumming and dancing, where there’s no performer/audience split— everybody is a participant. They’re both sort of modern expressions of something much more primal.



As far as I know, while there are over a dozen bands like this in the country, it’s the only festival of its kind. It’s definitely one of those things that make me happy to be living in Somerville.



I shot some video. It’s crappy, but it’s slightly better than the photos for giving you the flavor. It’s still nothing like being live in the middle of a dozen people all playing REALLY LOUD instruments.

So, in a similar spirit of embracing musical constraints, the other day I was vacuuming our room for the first time in … longer than I care to admit… and I was listening to the Robyn Hitchcock album Luxor. I bought it after we saw him at Johnny D’s in October 2003, which was probably one of the top 10 rock show’s I’ve ever seen. I’m not a big fan of his 80’s stuff (though “Balloon Man” does get in my head every time I’m near Bryant Park in New York). But I love, love, love Eye, Moss Elixir, and to a lesser extent Jewels for Sophia / A Star for Bram. But most of all, I love Luxor, which he recorded as a 50th birthday present to himself in one afternoon, just him and his guitar [shut up, all of you] in his backyard. And the finished product fits what I think he does when he’s at his best, sort of a folky, Syd Barretish, surrealist, word-driven, brainy pop, delivered with his unmistakeable crackling British voice.

[PS: His most recent album with the Venus 5 (some non-trivial fraction of R.E.M.) is a good example of him at his overproduced worst. The 2004 album Spooked, with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, is not too bad, though I have to say it did not live quite up to my high expectations for it. The more I delve into her catalogue, the more I love Gillian Welch.]

I have written long half-deranged screeds against the electric guitar here before, so I won’t bore you with a mere recap of my irrational and fairly hyporcritical invective once more. All I will recap is that I think electronic music is not a way out of the guitar-based pop morass; I write software for my day job, so outside of work I need something that is not programming, something that captures a performance, a more primal give and take between two or more human beings making some kind of organized noise (I’ve certainly heard electronic music that captures this spirit, but it’s a rare thing). And while I definitely get some energy from listening to classics of previous eras, like jazz and classical (I’m sorry, jazz people, give me a counterexample that jazz is not on life support, and I will gladly eat my words), I generally crave things that are more of the zeitgeist.

Anyway, part of what appeals to me about removing the electric guitar from modern pop is really almost just the exercise of doing something unfamiliar, like writing your name with your left hand (or right hand if you’re left-handed). So that is at least in part what attracts me to Tilly and the Wall. Rather than take out the guitar, they took out another central pillar of the heterodox rock platform: the drums. And replaced it with a miked tapdancer. Yes, the only percussion is tapdancing. It actually seems obvious in retrospect, like why did nobody think of this before, which is often the hallmark of total genius.

Terri bought their most recent album, Bottoms of Barrels, last year, and I liked a song or two, but lately, they’re all I can listen to.

Also, I forgive them for being part of the same Omaha milieu that spawned the loathsome Bright Eyes.

Also, they are staffed entirely by supermodels and dorky-looking guys, a formidable combination.

Also, I would include a youtube video of them on Letterman, but I can’t seem to get YouTube to come up right now, which is odd.

Here’s one that’s been sitting in the drafts folder since before the St. Patrick’s Week Pogues show that we went to with some friends.

So, the other night, when we were having dinner at Orleans with Trixie, the Villain, Tim, Terri, and Terri’s parents before the Pogues show, the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, toward monkeys and the appropriate uses of monkeys in restaurants. Herr Doktor Villain was proposing that it is basically never appropriate to have a monkey in a restaurant. I was suggesting that perhaps it was if accompanied by an organ grinder, but I accidentally said “Monkey Grinder”, a malaprop which changed the course of the conversation toward machinery geared toward primate grinding.

After dinner, we parted ways with Terri’s folks who headed back to The Curtisian and the rest of us headed toward the Orpheum and the final of the four Pogues pre-St. Patrick’s day shows in Boston.

It was very much the same story as last year’s Pogues show at the Orpheum. Shane did not drink the entire bottle of whiskey this time, though, and was not quite so falling-down drunk (though he did manage to fall once (Trixie described it well)). The band was playing together a bit better this year and sounded a little looser and confident.

Here’s the thing I feel weird about.

To what extent is it exploitation for me to enjoy a show where a prime source of entertainment is whether or not the lead singer is 1) in danger of being too drunk to make it to the venue 2) too drunk to make it to the stage 3) so drunk that he requires a runway made of reflective tape and stagehands with flashlights to shepherd him off stage 4) so drunk that he falls down when he’s stepping off stage for a drink despite the stagehands and the runway?

The phrase that came back to mind again was “monkey grinder”. Shane is the monkey in the grinder, being trotted out by his bandmates at the peril of his own health just so that they can make a buck while he’s still around.

I’ve softened my stance in the weeks since I originally wrote this, particularly after watching If I Should Fall From Grace, the documentary about Shane MacGowan made about 7 years ago, in which he was in basically the same astonishing state of constant inebriation in which he currently seems to reside. Shane is what he is, and the truth is, not only do the Pogues need him, but I think he needs them, too. I don’t think it’s exploitation to do three East-Coast USA shows a year. There are worse ways to make a living, and he would be far worse off drinking himself to death in obscurity.

Happy Friday the 13th.

• (Mr. Mountain Goat) John Darnielle’s blog’s RSS feed suddenly sprang into life, and I see that I have missed pretty much everything he’s posted since I subscribed. Anyway, I think unfortunately this means I might have to give CocoRosie another shot.
• Andrew Bird was on Letterman. (check out Dosh in a tie!)
• Oh, yeah, and I keep forgetting to mention that the new album is great. It has not usurped Weather Systems as my favorite. Yet.
• Bear, our friend’s cat, keeps trying to lure me into enhancing my MySpace presence with comments like these.
• The only intelligent coverage I’ve heard of the whole Imus thing yet was on NPR this morning with Steve Inskeep and Juan Williams talking about the invisible line that Imus crossed and some of the hypocrisy therein. They even ask the question I’ve wondered, which is what’s so bad about what he said compared to all of the other offensive and supposedly funny things he’s said over the years, and why do the advertisers care now?
• And when is NPR going to stop pretending that they’re not commercial radio? That link starts off with a 5-second *commercial*. They’ve definitely crossed an invisible line from “underwriting” to “advertising”. Maybe they should just officially change their name to the abbreviation “NPR” and never mention that it’s supposed to stand for “Public Radio”. Or, my vote would be to just change it to “The Nipper”. Personally, I decided to stop giving them a dime the day I heard what Christopher Lydon’s salary was, until the day I make more than he does. Until then, I need my money more than they do.

That is all.

What is up with my subconscious that I keep having these dreams about Lou Reed? This morning I woke up just after having a dream that Lou Reed, wearing this gigantic curly wig, was doing a commercial for McDonald’s. Specifically, he was advertising a special Happy Meal prize that was a Barbie head, sort of like that Barbie head that Mattel used to make that you were supposed to put make-up on. Well, this one was the Marie Osmond Hair Dye Barbie. Her hair started brown, and it came with little bottles of blonde, brown, and red dye. The commercial focused on Lou Reed’s face, the Barbie head in the background with its robot eyes making these “come hither” expressions. Lou was whispering earnestly “you can dye the hair. You can cut the hair. I love dying the hair. It’s so much fun. You’ll love it, too. You can dye and cut the hair.”

Last Wednesday or Thursday, I dreamt I was at a soundcheck for the Frank Zappa show at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which was being held on some kind of sort of moon colony or space station. After the sound check, I was talking to someone standing next to me, it seemed like Helmecki, and I was making fun of someone who acted like he thought he was Lou Reed. Just as I said that, Zappa walked by and said, “you know, Lou Reed is actually a really sweet man.” I was like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that.” And then Zappa and I kept talking.

As I am with everything else, I’m about 20 years late to the party in discovering Felt. I can’t stop listening to the song “My Darkest Light Will Shine”.

• I finally wrote about the Bazaar Bizarre at the Rainy Planet Press Blog, and have started a Rainy Planet Etsy store, and have some pictures of some of the stuff that we were selling.
• The excellent Weekly Dig is losing its editor-in-chief. There are two even better write-ups of it in the excellent Boston Globe (yes, I just used those three words in that order) Brainiac blog (the blog for the Sunday Ideas section) here and here. The second of those mentions Jeff Lawrence, the owner and cofounder who I met at the Bazaar Bizarre (you already read about that in the Rainy Planet blog entry, though, didn’t you?); it was a highlight of the Bazaar to get to tell him in person what a dismal, boring waste of trees the Phoenix is, and to thank him for the Dig. It felt good. Readers of this blog will attest that I have been ranting about this at every opportunity and wasn’t just kissing up. And if I needed further vindication, the week following the Bazaar, the Phoenix ran a big picture of Jim Fucking Morrison on the cover. Jim Morrison! I can’t make that up.
• Tomorrow night we’re going to the Onion Cellar at the ART. From the reviews, I get the idea that it’s not great theater; more like the “Mamma Mia” of the Dresden Dolls, except if ABBA were actually in “Mamma Mia”, so I guess it’s like the Billy Joel musical that he apparently was actually in. At any rate, I’m hoping it’s not an atrocity like the Bob Dylan musical. (Warning, you may have to take a shower if you actually watch this video).

If there were a giant Venn diagram of dorkdom, the slice where all the different brands of dork you have to be to get this is very thin indeed. Yet I suspect two or three of my readers to be in that slice, so I pass it along to you.

One or two others might even get the reference in this post’s title.

But Idi claimed he had done all the engineering, recording, and tech work. “Where are these engineers? Where are these men? Show them to me and I will honor them.” No one ever stepped forward to take that honor. Idi claimed he had “digested” the skills of certain producers. Gordy simply enjoyed giving out fewer paychecks.

If you’ve never been to a big tech conference, you may not be aware that these things often have big-name concerts, either as part of the actual event, or as part of the private side-parties thrown by various big companies. Though I have not been to one of these, I have come close enough to be able to imagine how little I’m missing (at the Computer Shopper party at Comdex ‘97, I saw Sinbad do a pretty lame computer-oriented standup routine, but I, sadly, did not rate enough to be invited to the Pointer Sisters later in the evening).

I got a pretty big chuckle out of the reports of Lou Reed’s losing it during his performance at the Web 2.0 conference:

Reed took the stage with bassists Rob Wasserman and Fernando Saunders and within minutes it became apparent that the crowd was not going to let the music stop their conversation. After his first two songs, “What’s Good” and “Gassed and Stoked,” Reed declared: “You got 20 minutes. You wanna talk through it, you can talk through it.”

“I can turn the sound louder and really hurt you,” he added. “Frank, turn it up.”

The sound got louder and people looked uncomfortable.

Part of me thinks it was pretty jerky of him; I mean, he knew what he was getting into, and I suspect he was aware of the essential whoredom of taking money to do a show for people who weren’t necessarily paying to see him.

But it’s about time somebody was honest enough to admit that these things are not really fun for either the attendees or the performer, they’re just about big companies demonstrating their bigness by the bigness of the artists they can afford.

Here’s something I’ve had brewing for a while. I’ve had this fascination with the song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” since I heard it in some WWII-inspired contemporary dance piece my sibs were in back when they were with Boston Ballet. (I unfortunately can’t remember the name of the piece, and the BB website has no archive). It totally got under my skin, and the more I learned about it, the more interesting it became.

It was written in 1932 by Sholom Secunda with Yiddish lyrics by Jacob Jacobs, for the Yiddish musical “I Would If I Could”. Five years later, two black performers named Johnny and George (last names lost in the mists of time) performed what was apparently a pretty rockin’ version of it (still in Yiddish!) at the Apollo. Songwriting team Sammy Cahn and pianist Lou Levy were in the audience, saw the way the crowd went crazy, and bought the rights for $30 from Secunda and Jacobs. Cahn and Levy shopped it around to performers like Tommy Dorsey, but didn’t get much interest in a Yiddish song. They translated it to English (and sort of de-Yiddish-ed the German), and got the then-relatively-unknown Andrews Sisters interested in recording it in 1937. It was released as the B-side to the 78 of “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, but it was what made the single their first huge hit, selling 350,000 copies.

It was also big hit in Germany; I think it’s apocryphal, but Hitler himself was supposed to be a fan until he found out that it was written by two Jews from New York (the only source I could find for this was a 1959 interview with Secunda). Another entertaining anecdote (I’m guessing also propagated by Secunda) was that his mother thought his failure to profit from his song was a punishment from God:

Mrs. Secunda, who speaks no English, does not understand about contracts and the law. She only knows that her son five years ago wrote a song called “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”, which today is making a fortune for its publishers, J. and J. Kammen. Secunda yielded his rights in 1933, Sammy Kahn and Saul Chaplin put English lyrics to it and revised it into swing tempo early this Summer and the rest is making tin pan alley history…

But his mother believes that somewhere along the years of her life, which began in Russia, she has sinned against God, and her son is being punished. Sholem, who lives at 86 Avenue A, Manhattan, this morning tried to explain laws of copyright to his mother because she planned to go back to the synagogue today and he fears her frail body may not withstand the fasting.

So. Let’s break it down. The song is written by two children of Russian Jewish immigrants, re-invented five years later by two last-name-less black musicians, bought by two enterprising Jews who frequent the Apollo, performed by three squeaky-clean-sounding sisters from Minnesota. In sort-of Yiddish. On the eve of World War II.

If I had to pick one single perfect pop song from the first half of the 20th Century, this would be it. It is just this compact, concentrated fusion of everything that was going on musically, socially, and politically in America at the time. It’s also incredibly catchy.

It’s perfect pop: it takes in all these crazy chaotic influences and reflects them back as this totally new and shallow and perfect thing.

Sources:

• The Yiddish Radio Project: Bei Mir Bist Du Schon
• The non-bloggish Blog: Musical Assimilation
• Bei Mir Bist du Schon:Johnny and George are back down at the Apollo

I’m a bit late on posting about the Mountain Goats show we went to the other night. I feel like I’m really late coming to the Mountain Goats party; I’m OK with that, because it’s not hugely important to me to be an early adopter in the music department. I’m content to let other people filter out the duds and shove something great into my hands. With the Mountain Goats, it was (as it often is) Summervillain and Editrix who put a song from The Sunset Tree on their 2005 sampler, and got me hooked.

We got there pretty early, but we did not get the prime front-row photo perch that Terri had hoped for. She still managed some good shots.

Christine Fellows (the opener) was good, but not someone I’m going to seek too much more of, to be honest. She had a lot of personal, songwritery songs. I don’t necessarily have a thing against songs like that, but if they don’t work for you, you end up feeling like you’re supposed to be moved more than you are, and you end up feeling guilty, because this person has really poured their heart into what they’re doing. I can’t deal with that guilt, so I tend to just avoid the whole thing. Anyway, her songs sure did something for John Darnielle, who was peeking through the stage left doors, sitting on the floor, and just utterly rocking out during much of her set.

If you know their stuff, if you’ve seen them live, if you’ve read about their shows, you have a pretty good idea of what they’re like live. John Darnielle makes a lot of really goofy faces, and really looks like sort of a cartoon character. Peter Hughes is a really good bass player; he kept to the background without being wallpaper (e.g. he talked).

They probably only played 3 songs from the new album (”Wild Sage”, “New Monster Avenue”, “Half Dead”), more than I expected from The Sunset Tree (”This Year”, “Broom People”, “Song for Dennis Brown”, “Love Love Love”, “Dance Music”), none from We Shall All Be Healed, a couple from Talahassee (”No Children” and something I don’t remember), a few I didn’t really recognize, and one from All Hail West Texas (”color in your cheeks”).

The inevitable bandana guy was denied his repeated and loud requests for “Up The Wolves”.

Everybody else at the show was 18. How do 18 year olds get so bitter that the Mountain Goats resonate? Nevermind. I’m not that old yet. I remember. But, damn, if it wasn’t unsettling to hear 600 kids merrily singing along “I hope that you die! I hope we both die!”. It really did feel like a sing-a-long at times.

I forget which of the previously mentioned songs were the first encore, but he played “Going to Georgia” as a second encore.

Yes, a second encore, folks. The lights had come up, and the “go away now” music had started, but he came out, and everybody started cheering, so he picked up his guitar, and said that he’d only come out to retrieve his notebook, because he knew someone would steal it (bandana guy: “I totally would have!”; John Darnielle, justified: “see, he’s admitting it!”), and then felt it would be unfair to make an appearance back onstage without playing something.

Good show.