wake up!

I do the white man’s overbite. Please @kentbrew, point that camera over at @cynk. ah. better. thnaks!

Seaside Jazz Fest 2007
Originally uploaded by andytnisbet.

B’s brother Andy took this really nice picture of my sweetie and me. We spent Sunday down in Seaside (right next door to Monterey). Good food, great people, fantastic music (with a rotating cast of players), not too many speeches, birthday wishes to B’s sister Peg, anniversary memories of B’s mom, cold weather, no sunburn, fine beverages, did I mention the good food?

UPDATE: Andy’s photo above links to all of his photos from the party at Flickr. You can also see B’s photos from the same event there.

My first article at a new music blogzine called Stuck Between Stations went live today. It’s called Goodbye, Ruby Grapefruit. Joe Bob says check it out.

Been meaning to do some recording at Vortex Studios and last weekend I finally got the chance. Cecil played me his song, “Styrofoam,” and then recorded me singing it with his backing tracks in my ears to guide me.

So far, so good. then Cecil added harmony vocals, additional guitars and keyboards and drums ‘n’ stuff and just generally whipped it up into a beautiful little track. Suddenly my plaintive reedy voice is fronting the Cecil Vortex Experience, an experience I heartily recommend.

Go listen to Styrofoam now. It’s just over two minutes, just over two megs. What have you got to lose?

Overall it was a musical week for me, as I got a chance to sit in with the Gloria Monday’s farewell SF show at Ireland’s 32 on Tuesday night. I have footage of that as well, but it will stay firmly in the vault as a reminder that I need to rehearse my uke licks bigtime.

Adina Levin sent me a head’s up (discussed on her blog: BookBlog: Dianne Feinstein wants to ban mp3) about the resurrection of the PERFORM act (why am I not surprised Lieberman is a co-sponsor?):

Hi, all. Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Senator Feinstein has just re-introduced the PERFORM act, a bill that makes it illegal to record music from the internet and bans the use of mp3 by online music services (!). The EFF has information and a handy action alert. Please sign it, pass it on, and blog it.

I did it. It’s kind of funny sending Feinstein a letter asking her to oppose her own bill! But it also got sent automatically to Boxer too, who may be somewhat less likely to ignore it. I may mail it as well as I hear emails are often ignored. (EFF also faxes your letter for you.)

In the past I’d have blogged this at Edgewise so here’s an example of the sort of blog-consolidation I was talking about earlier.

Driving back to my office on 101 North from Santa Clara I hit the button for KCSM and caught most of "Jam Blues" by Charlie Parker and an all-star crew. I'm going to have to get me that record. It was a perfect California moment, sailing up the freeway with Bird blowing in my ear.

Barney Kessel's guitar solo was particularly sweet. Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Charlie Shavers, and Johnny Hodges all took turns as well, each one burning up the tracks without cutting each other or showing away.

Nice interlude in the middle of another hectic workday.

I started off the long weekend right by seeing Brian Wilson's crack band (orchestra?) perform a long show with the entire SMiLE album nestled in its middle. They let us out of work early, which was nice, and I met up with my friends Non and Roo and Non's brother Bob for some Japanese food on northside before we hiked down to the Greek theatre in Berkeley in time to find our seats and get settled before the beginning of the show.

The first set was full of great tunes, including a few of my favorites from Pet Sounds. The second set was SMiLE in its entirety - the record really comes to life when you see it performed - and a long encore set focused on Chuck Berry style rockers. Finally Brian came out one final time, read a message of love and support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and closed the show with Love and Mercy.

Overall, a very satisfying night even though B couldn't make because the poor thing was on an airplane to Heathrow (and ultimately, Palermo).

Here's the setlist from a post at Brian's official website:

Do It Again
Dance, Dance, Dance
Breakaway
Then I Kissed Her
In My Room
Surfer Girl
Drive In
When I Grow Up
Do You Wannna Dance
Little St Nick
Please Let Me WonderDarlin'
Help Me Rhonda
California Girls
Sloop John B
Wouldn't It Be Nice
Pet Sounds
God Only Knows
Sail On Sailor
Marcella

Our Prayer/Gee
Heroes and Villains
Roll Plymouth Rock
Barnyard
Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
Cabin Essence
Wonderful
Song for Children
Child if Father of the Man
Surf's Up
I'm in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop
Vega-Tables
On a Holiday
Wind Chimes
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
In Blue Hawaii
Good Vibrations

Johnny B Goode
I Get Around
Barbara Ann
Surfin' USA
Fun, Fun, Fun

Path of Life
Love and Mercy

Ed Ward reminisces about Bob Marley and the Wailers and the rock music journalism scene of the mid 1970s, a reverie triggered by an old photo sent to him by an old friend. Great stuff.

So xourmas and I debuted our duo last night (May 23) in New York at an open mic at the Bowery Poetry hosted by the O'Debra Twins (aka, Your Psycho ex-Girlfriends). There is a lottery to perform and each act gets seven minutes. We went on around 12:45 and did our arrangements of two standards. Here's the setlist (for posterity):

Salty Dog
Take Me to the River

I am now officially addicted to applause.

Went to Stubb's barbecue last night with Syrup and her beau to hear the Gourds and Old 97's. Tried to eat there but there was 45-minute wait so we went to Jaime's across the street and I had - wait for it - tex-mex again! Shrimp enchiladas were excellent, as was the top shelf margarita.

The Gourds were really great. It turns out I'd heard them once before (they do a killer cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin 'n' Juice - but they didn't do it that night). They use at various times a fiddle, a mando (two guys play it), a banjo, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, and accordion and keyboards. This is just five guys. Great sound. Often somewhat down-homey but always rocking and at the end even a bit shreddy. They also covered the Standell's "Dirty Water."

Old 97's were ok alt-country radio friendly rock, but I was getting tired so walked the four or so blocks back to my hotel after about six of their tunes.

Tonight, on the recommendation of Fresh Air's Ed Ward I'll be checking out the Resentments at the Saxon Pub.

For a few months I've been wondering why my upper arms have been aching. Did I lift something? Is it referred pain? Today, it dawned on me. I've been practicing guitar and ukulele for about an hour or so a day for almost a year. No wonder! Now I don't even mind. It's just like the way you get used to the tips of your fingers burning.

Scalzi is spreading a meme:

1. Open up the music player on your computer (if you have one -- the music player, I mean. Clearly you have a computer, because otherwise you couldn't read this).
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty.

1. "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling" - Righteous Brothers
2. "Junco Partner" - James Booker
3. "Down in the Cockpit" - XTC
4. "Cryptical Envelopment" - Grateful Dead
5. "Cup of Kindness" - Emmylou Harris
6. "Japanese Folk Song (Kojo No Tsuki)" - Thelonious Monk
7. "Pleasant Moments" - Scott Joplin
8. "Satellite" - Robyn Hitchcock
9. "All We Have is Now" - Flaming Lips
10. "A Soft Seduction" - David Byrne
11. "Dear Prudence" - Jerry Garcia

Spread the word. Let's help them get their equipment back.

(via MZ, who adds: "This stinks.")

>Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:07:59 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "J. Segel"
>Reply-To: jsegel@magneticmotorworks.com
>Subject: [BA-NEWMUS:14634] stolen gear
>To: "Bay Area New Music Discussion"
>
>hey i don't know if anybody knows anybody up here in montreal, but:
>
>all of camper van beethoven's guitars and violin and our merch got stolen last night in montreal. if anybody has any contacts up here, tell them to look for our stuff in stores. or hunt down the robbers and kill them.
>
>jonathan's violin with stickers all over it
>jonathan's 1971 strat (sunburst) (with a couple stickers, etc.)
>victor's 1969 precision bass (natural finish)
>david's green charvel surfcaster
>david's black jackson surfcaster
>a couple ibanez acoustics
>johnny's black eric clapton strat
>greg's frankenstein strat (black) and tele (tobacco sunbusrst) (warmoth esp or something)
>plus mike duclos' precision bass and ezster balint's gibson sg and danelectro semi acoustic.
>maybe more.. not sure yet.
>a few tshirts and a road case of cds. including the email list we collected last night, preventing this from going out to montreal fans!
>
>and i liked this city!

MAGNETIC -- Jonathan Segel PO Box 460816 S.F. CA. 94146-0816

It seems that I'm not the only one out there who sees the ukulele as the perfect punk rock instrument.

This article, Punk Uke: The four-string Underdog rudely rocks by Christopher Arnott from last year describes an eerily similar path to my own:

[Y]ou can wake this restless monster up gently with a quaint strum, then by the second verse start slamming the strings with more abandon, until by the end of the song you're scraping and scratching the barest and brashest notes out of the instrument like a demented Dashboard Confessional car crash.

Now that punk itself is the province of hit-making conglomerates and prefab teen sensations, where can we turn for some gutsy, unadulterated chords that don't remind us of the crap on the radio? I say it's the ukulele, and I'm not alone. A new breed of punks has brought revolution, raw roots and cultural controversy to the uke community.

The ukulele's Hawaiian origins as an ornate small guitar to accompany beautiful island warblings was long ago warped by the American and British desire to use it to play drinking songs. The riot-uke or uke-punk contingent is the next obvious step in a dishonorable but highly entertaining tradition.

Adapting rock and punk songs to the ukulele is not so much a deconstruction as it is wanton destruction. Feeling those tough nylon strings sproing and churn under the savage swipes of fingernails, holding on while the hollow reverberations shake that vulnerable little wooden body, hearing the chords bend out of tune and into their own realm of acoustic feedback.

Filtered through the four twangy strings of a ukulele, every song becomes a brittle shell of its former self, knocked down to its barest punk essentials. There's a perversity to this, but also a divine purity. Folk, bluegrass and blues influences come to the forefront. So does a chirpy, silly glee.

The first song I learned from the gleefully bizarre songbook Jumpin' Jim's '60s Uke-In, one of many useful uke guides prepared by the hyper-enthused uke evangelist Jim Beloff, was Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay." Beloff's arrangement of this deeply moving soul classic transforms the song into a travesty of its former self. And how could it not? You're playing a doom-laden, world-weary Motown-tinged lament on a jolly little instrument best suited to pep songs like "The Varsity Rag." It's impossible not to add cheery "do-be-do-be-do"s to "Dock of the Bay" when you're playing it on ukulele.

I raided guitar-tab Web sites for the chords to the most unlikely uke fodder I could think of[.]

Stripped of its echoing drums and rampaging vocals, Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" reveals its hidden kinship with "I'm Henry VIII I Am."

A little more quotage and some good links below the fold (but read the whole thing, you'll want to get every drop).

words and music by Robyn Hitchcock (email downstyle of capitalization mine all mine mine mine):

linda ryan in the sky
i seen her laughing
but i never seen her cry
she took her fireman
it was her half-empty flight
he brought his hose and
everything just turned out right
i'm just watching...

german leather
a german tongue
lapping pleasure
when's he's rubbery and young
he played the oboe
i thought he would
he does it better
than a guitarist like me could
i'm just watching, don't mind me...
i'm just watching on my own...

flesh cartoons
flesh cartoons

life is easy
life goes by
linda ryan
she's still up there in the sky
thank you linda
she doesn't age
despite the weather
she looks the same on every page
i'm just watching, don't mind me
i'm just watching on my own

i got no feelings
i got no friends
i've got insurance
and i despise those who pretend
life's a movie
life's a dream
i love you baby
things are always what they seem
i'm just watching, don't mind me...
i'm just watching on my own...

flesh cartoons
flesh cartoons

"loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh"
yeah, i said, "loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh"
whoah, i said loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh""
yeah, i said "loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh loony, oh"

I'm not a huge Phish head but I really like some of their material and I love their whole approach to making live improvised rock 'n' roll together.

They also share some contemporaneous New Jersey-in-the-mid-'80s experiences with me in their origin stories (the Rhombus, the miniature guitars, the strange period in 1985 where the Dead head scene in Princeton was awash with acid).

Also, I represent The Mockingbird Foundation as their literary agent for their Phish Companion series with Backbeat Books.

We are shipping the second edition to the printer any day now, so this news of the band's breakup caught us short. With touring bands there is always the temptation to hold off a little longer to add the next run of shows, especially if it's about to be the finale (supposedly), but the truth is it probably makes more sense to come out on time and immediately start work on a retrospective third edition to come out in 2006 or so and be "Phish complete."

It's not my decision, of course. I'm just a consigliere on this deal, but I like all the people involved (and the band), so I care how it works out.

Here's the text of the announcement:

AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TREY 05.25.04

Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk openly about the strong feelings I've been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note. Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys' feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways - most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don't want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We're also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you've shown us.

--Trey Anastasio

Still behind on taking notes, but here are my photos from Saturday.

I'll post my notes later, but for now here's a photo album.

If I hadn't been so ragged out B and I could have stayed for more than the first four Mekons songs at the Starry Pluff in Berkeley last night, but what I heard sounded fantastic. I said to B, "What they've retained of the punk aesthetic is the 'no wanking' rule." Everything was spare and tasty and their voices sounded great. Good thing ear at zoka was taping from the soundboard!

My guitar was too hard to learn on. I took it the Thin Man music store in Alameda and the dude there to restring it with lightweight strings and lower the action for me. I also bought this beautiful tenor ukulele for $75 because I figure that will also be much much easier to learn on. I practiced a bunch of chords this afternoon and the fingers on my left hand have that gonna-be-calluses feeling.

I'll snap and post a picture of the uke soon. Looks like I'll be out of town (in New Orleans) during the Ukulele Festival in Hayward on April 25.

The personal expression platform wants to do sound and it wants to do pictures and it's going to want to do motion capture eventually but right now it just wants to be able to sing, recontextualize, and join the great chorus of call and response.

So, to sound. Cecil writes music, sings, plays guitar, and plays piano. Bob and Jeff from the Uncalled Four are both hugely talented musicians. Their group was my own personal Nirvana a year before grunge made the '70s play clothes of my childhood (think corduroy and plaid flannel) into a fashion statement. We were kids then, though, still mostly in our 20s, and when a Nirvana came along, the dominant impulse was to give up, instead of thinking "look what can happen when things are going right." Of course I need a better example than one that ends with brains on the wall. Too bad Nick Hornby already wrote the Nirvana novel. Oh wait, I'm doing it again.

And plus, nobody's done the Camper van Beethoven novel yet.

Also, GarageBand is here. As soon as I get some scratch I'll want Panther and an iPod and a decent mic for my inimitable cover-song stylings.

Really what I need to do is talk to Michael o'Zoka, who's a decade ahead of me in understanding how to digitally grease the wheels of music.

Hey, my band needs a sound guy and a midi clarinet player and a graceful system admin. We need a drummer too.

And that's just the music. I'm rounding up the writers and artists and book designers and coders and crowd from Nightjar and Too Many Cooks and Enterzone and Arts Beyond Borders and Watchword and To-Do List and (the good, old school) Bust and Coffee House.

I've got ideas for Open Publishing. I have some intellectual property sitting on the shelf. I've got some not-ready-for-prime-time plans brewing down at the meme house and the metaphor barn.

I need help. I can't do all this stuff alone. But I wanna be your lover baby I don't want to be your boss. Don't ask me to hire you and handle your insurance in this fucked up dying-off system. Work with me. Do the stuff you want to do and get help with the things you need help with. We'll barter services and we won't even keep track. I'll pay too if that's the only way to get things to happen. (I'd happily pay MichaelZ his hourly rate just to come in and consult on my media tools and make some hardware, software, network, and config information.)

If any of this is making sense, I apologize.

Your liver pays dearly now for youthful magic moments,
But rock on completely with some brand new components.

How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?

Excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking what they're selling.
Your self-destruction doesn't hurt them.
Your chaos won't convert them.
They're so happy to rebuild it.
You'll never really kill it.
Yeah, excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking what they're selling.
Excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking,
You're drinking,
You're drinking what they're selling.

[Courtesy of Lyrics.Net.ua]

Coming soon...! The Dead Vault on your freaking iPod.

Nearly every week I shop for groceries at the Berkeley Bowl. Inevitably, near the end of my round, in the produce section, I find my mind humming the words "... yesterday don't matter when it's gone / Dying all the time / Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind / In life unkind...." Just when I start wondering why I'm thinking about a Rolling Stones song, the chorus kicks in "Goodbye, Ruby Grapefruit / Who could hang a name on you."

Just this morning, doing some dishes, I found myself mentally singing Dylan's Buckets of Rain, specifically the part that goes "Little red wagon / Little red bike / I ain't no monkey but I know what I like...." As I reeled back the mental tape, I remembered looking at some unsorted laundry on the bedroom table, specifically a pair of gray socks I thought might have been mind instead of B's, but then I noticed they were pretty small, so they probably are hers. This made me think of the cat in the comic strip Mutts singing his (her?) happy song while worrying a "little pink sock." A few minutes later, my mind had completed it's search for a related song and it was just a sohrt leap from little pink sock to little red wagon.

Yes, I know I am strange.

Thanks to shacker I just noticed that Mike Watt is playing bass with a Stooges reunion in SF this December:

iggy pop + the stooges watt gets the incredible honor of adding bass to the lendary team of iggy and the asheton brothers in some re-ignited stooge fury!

friday, december 12
part of the not so silent night at the bill graham civic auditorium
99 grove st.
san francisco, ca
(415) 974-4016

I'm already thinking of seeing Watt with Banyan this Saturday (Nov. 29, show starts at 10) at the Great American (859 O'Farrell St., SF, 415 885-0750).

(Mike Watt is on my very short "always try to see 'em" list.)

Scot Hacker asks the musical question, What was your first record?

My older sister had the Partridges record he depicts (as well as a few others - all of them?), but the first record I bought myself was Kiss Destroyer, an LP that by pure coincidence was given to me for my birthday last week, years after I had sold it to the Princeton Record Exchange along with all my other Kiss albums out of embarassment (a decision I later regretted, of course, both for the irony value of the Kiss LPs as well as out of shame for denying my own roots).

Mac at Tacitus asks the musical question

At that point in your life when you hit the brink of adulthood (college graduation, dropping out, joining the navy, being kidnapped by cult of left-handed redheads, whatever it might be) what was the single most defining album/CD that the largest number of people you knew were likely to own?

Here's what I posted off the cuff:

Coming of age is hard to define, no? The biggest single album of my college years may have been Purple Rain, with "When Doves Cry" as the song noted most likely to be cranked out of dorm windows into the quad in the spring of my junior I think year (of college).

But first-job era? Hard to remember, it was the very bland pre-Berlin Wall late '80s and I was seeing a lot of Dead shows and listening to a lot of jazz and blues, so I wasn't really tapped into what was popular. The next album to make an impression was probably Nevermind which captured a sound a lot of my friends' bands were groping for and somehow signaled the end of my youth.

Re-reading the thread I guess I could have picked a U2 album, such as Joshua Tree or the live one, to straddle that end-of-college/first-job divide. You know the part where I'm living in a commune that straddles two houses a block apart and Reagan is still president?

Since then, even without such profound turning points in my life to accompany, other albums, songs, or bands have still managed to affect me like the ones that ruled the airwaves as I became an adult (assuming I did), though I'm more disconnected from the wider world enjoying it at the same time.

At least with Nevermind I got to share it with friends who were themselves no longer teenagers. By the time I was playing Contemplatin' the Engine Room or OK Computer or Yoshimi over and over on my CD player or my iTunes setup, I was getting heavily into this or that record entirely by myself, able to imagine the bigger mass audience but encountering it only online or at my increasingly infrequent live-concert outings.

Just remembered another candidate for the "coming of age" album: Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Camper Van Beethoven.

I think all the semiautobiographical stories I want to tell have implicit soundtracks and in at least one, the music is part of the story and part of the structure (bootleg and mix tapes cue anecdotes and reminiscences - they function as little time-travel chutes and ladders).

In "Shady Lane," Malkmus (I need to listen to his Jicks albums) sings something like, "You've been chosen as an extra in the abstract for the trailer of the sequel to your life...."

Note to self: get Ween tickets today.

Note to self, the second: Sit far enough from the stage to avoid the Poopship Destroyer, if they've got it on this tour.

Warren Zevon died Sunday, September 7, at the untimely age of 56.

You know one of the things I most admire about the guy is that when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer the first thing he did was hit the studio and record a new fucking album.

The man who wrote "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" took a nap and didn't wake up.

He was a musician's musician and he'll be greatly missed. It makes the Lindley performance of "Werewolves of London" from the night before all the more poignant.

We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

Or something like that. Rest in peace, Warren.

David Lindley's '80s band El Rayo-X reunited recently for some shows and I saw them play last night at the Fillmore with Michael Z. and Suki. What a great show! So many highlight, I'm not sure where to start. Perhaps the biggest crowd pleaser was "She Took Off My Romeo" during which Lindley had the audience sing the chorus a few times, and then asked us to sing it all high (in falsetto), and then low (all basso profundo). It was really fun and he was obviously getting off on it, because he kept mentioning just how "sick" it had been, how "insane." He also said that they were taping the show so we're all going to be on the CD.

What else? He played my favorite El Rayo-X number, "Quarter of a Man," along with so many others "Let the Girl Go Home," "Don't Look Back," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" ("Mama, I'm depending on you/To tell I the truth"), "Bye-Bye Love" (first encore), "Werewolves of London" (second encore, with a long improvised riff twisting on the "Saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen/Doing the werewolves of London" lyric - in this case he saw George Bush walking with Margaret Thatcher, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger walking with George Schultz... naturally it turned out to be Arnold drinking a pina colada in Trader Vic's - his hair was perfect, which led into a long disquisition on Mr. Dave's hair, which is of course "very, very greasy"), "Twist and Shout," "Brother John," and so many others, most in Lindley's famous whiteguy reggae stylee.

The audience was mostly of an age to know who Lindley was (probably from his backing work on records by Linda Rondstadt, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, and others), so I was among the youngest there, which is a rare experience for me at a rock shows these days. In addition to original Rayo drummer Walfredo Reyes (now with Santana), Lindley's current musical partner, Wally Ingram, also sat in on drums and weird percussion objects (like his famous tin dustpan and what looked like a WWI combat helmet). The "Dos Wallies" played a few snappy drum duets that were sinuous and at times melodic, never lapsing into the terrible clichés of drum solos and duets established by arena rock bands in the '70s.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some highlights, but that should give the flavor of the evening. Nice souvenir poster, too!

Nice VH-1 interview with Warren Zevon on making music in the face of death, witty observations about Hunter S. Thompson and more:

The first exchange we ever had was about 10 years ago, when my daughter and I arrived in Aspen. I said, "Dr. Thompson, I've got the most terrible headache you can ever imagine. I don't know what to do at this altitude." He said, "Acid."

Browsing cheesedog (aka, Garret Keogh to those antiwebbers out there reading this), I found a link to the dependable Onion (I have an iPod... in my mind) which cracked me up so hard it inspired this unfortunate urge to post a link to an Onion bit, in lockstep, no doubt, with hundreds of other webloggers.

Choice bit:

You say those iPods have customizable playlists that allow you to line up songs of your choosing? Primitive! I can put together a playlist, say "Best-Ever Heavy Metal Anthems," while I'm sitting in traffic. My mind is light-years beyond that, though. Does your iPod have the "That Reminds Me Of Another Great Song" feature? Well, my mind does!

Comment on another blog: "but I still want one."

The only night I had unbooked during my brief New York jaunt tis summer was last night (Friday). That's probably not surprising, since this whole thing was short notice and that's the night people were most likely to already have plans. After a nice dinner with my parents at home, I looked through some entertainment listings and saw that the Greg Osby Four were playing at Birdland, the legendary nightclub.

I caught his 11 pm set, and it was great. I'd heard of Osby but never heard him perform live. I'd recommend his group to anyone who likes adventurous jazz somewhere on the spectrum from bebop to contemporary, difficult but melodic. It often seemed like the drummer, stand-up bass player, pianist, and Osby on alto were all playing in different time signatures, but somehow it worked.

It was so nice out even around 1:30 or so when I came out of the club, balmy and warm, that I decided to stroll around Times Square a bit. No longer the thrilling furtive cesspit of my youth, the area is now something akin to Fisherman's Wharf, with arcades, wax museums, and other tourist-y attractions. Lots of people out at that time of night, many of them young - teenagers or young adults, all ethnicities, all nationalities. Plenty of tourists, of course.

This beautiful young Italian woman walking with her tall handsome boyfriend stopped me and asked me they way to Times Square.

"You're in it," I said.

They looked puzzled.

"Was there something specific you were looking for?" I asked, trying to be helpful.

They looked at each other, hesitated for a moment, and then both said, "the square."

"Oh," I said, thinking quickly. "There is no square."

They still looked confused. "This is all you get," I said. Then I headed off for the subway.

Later I wondered if I should have pointed them toward the giant famous neon intersection at Broadway and 7th, but I still think they would have been disappointed. There's nothing in Times Square like the plazas you find in Italian cities.

This morning I was talking to B about this, and our conversation ranged from the history of Times Square to Herald Square to Union Square, to Union Square and Washington Square in San Francisco, and to other intersections and roundabouts, such as Piccadilly Circus in London, which we'd visited once, the night we ate at the Metropole during the mad cow square and the entire wait staff thanked me vigorously for ordering the calf's liver.

I mentioned how the circus in Piccadilly is the roundabout itself (what they to call a traffic circle in New Jersey), and that there's no circus there in the sense we mean today when talking about Barnum and Bailey (coincidentally, my father mentioned that P.T. Barnum used to have a hippodrome where Union Square in New York is located now).

"There's no circus in Piccadilly Circus," I said to B. "There's no square in Times Square...."

"Isn't that a Cole Porter song?" she said, reading my mind.

"If not," I said, "it should be."

Newsflash: Pixies to reunite

Predicted reaction from Scot Hacker: ho hum

Off to the Greek Theatre (in Berkeley) today to see a three-act show headed by Beck, whose journal is remarkably ordinary and down-to-earth, for a cockeyed Scientologist art-family rock superstar.

My friend in New Orleans sent me this link to the article about Ornette's performance at Jazz Fest from the Times-Picayune.

I knew I wanted to have a seat in the Jazz tent for Ornette Coleman's headlining set, but the question was how far in advance I'd need to squat there to manage it, because there were a few other acts scattered around the other stages that we wanted to see as well, earlier in the day.

For instance, we headed to the small Lagniappe stage (set up nowadays in the winner's circle inside the grandstand) on arrival to hear John Fohl's solo acoustic guitar set. Fohl is a much in demand sideman in New Orleans these days. Among his gigs is the current lead guitar seat in Dr. John's touring band. He played a Professor Longhair instrumental, with the classic New Orleans second-line stride boogie-woogie ragtime transposed to the fretboard.

He has a good voice, reminds me a bit of Nils Lofgren solo... a new tune called "You Told Me To" ... his voice is now reminding me of John Prine (later b says she detects a Bonnie Raitt influence)... then comes his arrangement of James Booker's version of "Sunny Side of the Street."

This one guy in the audience had a bitchin' DNA tattoo:

large iced cafeé au lait
three beignets

b wants to get a picture of me wearing my pornOrchestra t-shirt (notice the powdered sugar from the beignets visible on my front):

That shirt got little gasps and chuckles all day.

We heard Los Calientes in passing from the Congo Square stage, as we found our way to a shady spot, surrounded by sounds from several stages, Louisiana folk life demonstrations (fishnet-making and casting). B admires the rough-hewn benches and goes to find out who makes them. It turns out they are made by the festival's crafts crew.

large crawfish sausage po'boy, to share (with mayo and creole mustard)
large unsweetened rosemint tea

We enjoyed the small crawfish sausage (boudin-style) so much the other day that we decided to split a big one today - b wanted to get a picture of that too:

...still lazing in the shade of the big tree, listening to the end of D.L. Menard & the Louisiana Aces and the beginning of Sean Ardoin -n- Zydekool (both from the Fais Do-Do stage), b has me take a picture of her wearing her Save the Bay t-shirt, but the picture doesn't come out all that great. Plus it was never going to top the one taken at macchu pichu (sp?).

There are no good postcards this year, including in the bookstore tent. Several parades go by (they schedule about five or six marching-band parades daily, and the staging area is not from where we are hanging out).

Following the parade, b gets this picture of women all in yellow (check out the shoes):

Later, in the next parade, I snap some pictures of stiltwalkers:

We pass a strange Economy Hall version of the Chris Owens revue (she is an ancient French Quarter attraction) en route to Lagniappe for Hot Club of New Orleans, young guys playing the Stephane Grapelli/Django Reinhardt repertoire of "hot jazz" as made popular by the Hot Club of Paris in the 20s and 30s.

They play at least one Ellington tune, and "Just One of Those Things." I have to leave before they're done to secure seats for us in the Jazz tent in time for Ellis Marsalis, who'll be preceding Ornette. (The local Gambit weekly or Offbeat music magazine had mentioned that Ellis and Alvin Batiste once trekked to Los Angeles to meet and hang around and play with Ornette when he was working out his free-jazz theories later referred to as "harmolodics" so we kind of expected some sitting-in to occur).

I find decent seats with good sightlines stage right (the sound's pretty good everywhere, but it helps to be on the piano side if you want to hear the piano loud and clear). Just as Ellis (with a sax, bass, and son Jason on drums) starts to play, b appears with softshell crab po'boy (what else?) and yet another large unsweetened rosemint tea. He sounds as spry as ever on the keys:

Three or four songs in they launch into "My Favorite Things" and Alvin Batiste sits in on clarinet:

Then, for a while, Ellis turns his stage over to three high-school kids from Indiana, Pennsylvania whom he met at a workshop there (he'd told them to come down to New Orleans and they'd be welcome). They play sax, bass, and drums and do a few standards and a few originals. When Ellis retakes the stage, he says he is often asked about the future of jazz and he tells us we have just heard it for ourselves. Honestly, the audience is relieved that Ellis's "real band" has another 20 minutes to play.

Ellis mentions a Batiste composition called "Cochise" that was based on Cherokee harmonies, and then invites him up to lead the band through another song, "Spy Boy." (Ellis's sax player - Larry Gomez? - is a real find; he has great tone on both tenor and alto saxes. On Spy Boy he plays tenor and Alvin plays clarinet.)

The anticipation builds as the time for Coleman's set to start passes. Kidd Jordan comes out to announce the band and kill a little time onstage. He tells us we are in for the music of a lifetime, and reminds us that Ornette is a true innovator, and influential original, whose free style of jazz guarantees more than usual that the improvisations we will hear will never have been played before and may never be played the same way again.

I fight my way to the front of the stage, where the ground is covered with people sitting several rows deep, some of whom are yelling for the photographers to sit down and get out of their way, even though the music hasn't started yet. I scrape my knuckles, rubbing sand and grit into the open cuts before I even notice them, probably trying to keep my balance while squatting in the smallest space possibe. I still have scab on my knuckles and I'm writing this three days later. When I got back to my seat I felt the sting and throb in my hand, and it was as if I'd literally had to fight for my pictures.

Ornette has a shy, beatific presence, and the photographers all started clicking and winding away as soon as he appeared in his beautiful Thai silk suit. I think this picture of him really captures his unassuming manner:

A European, possibly German, begged me to get out of his line of sight. I reminded him that photographers were permitted to take pictures during the first song (only) of the set. He moaned, "But that first song will last 50 minutes!" I waited until the band (Ornette, a stand-up bass player, and his son Denardo on drums) got set and Coleman put the 'phone to his lips, and then I took a bunch of shots of him playing. Many came out with photographers' heads taking up most of the foreground. A few came out OK:

Then I was able to retreat to my seat (by then we had move to a more central position about five rows back from the front) and just relax as the music unfolded all around me. Coleman's style is exquisitely melodic. It just doesn't involve repetition or soloing over chords. The bass player took solo turns, plucking (and sometimes bowing) often very high up on the fretboard (that is, physically, very low on the fretboard, where the notes get higher). He was fantastic. Denardo got to take one solo near the end and delivered a very tasteful turn.

It's unusual to let any act go past 7 pm at Fest, but Ornette was permitted to play until 7:12, as he brought Ellis and Alvin out for his final number. First he spoke about how touched he had been when Marsalis and Batiste had showed up on his doorstep in L.A. those many years ago to tell him that they got what he was doing and wanted to see him and talk about it and play together. They lived with him for a while at the time.

Ornette briefly blowed his trumpet and even more briefly scratched on his violin.

In that final song, the two old timers really stretched out, showing that they fully understood harmolodics, soloing inventively, with beautiful dynamics and relentless invention. Then Ornette played they head of the song and the show was over. The crowd gave him, his band, and his guests a thunderous standing ovation.

Scot Hacker is all over the new iTunes store story, dropping wisdom on theory and practice left and right. Caveat: a man who calls OK Computer "Radiohead's lamest album" is a man who has outgrown cannabis.

The good news is I haven't had time each day to get online and upload pictures and such and even now I'm just going to dump raw notes and maybe come back to it later:

large iced café au lait
beignets

...to Blues tent to grab seats, then back out for...

crab cake and seafood mirliton casserole with smokes jalapeño tomato tartar sauce

Henry Butler with a seven-piece band (keys, bass drums, guitar, tenor or alto sax, trumpet, and percussion). Got good pix. Here's one:

Tent is packed. We met Rosie, the percussionist, last night. Henry announced Rosie's daughter's ninth birdthday from the stage... Several tunes from his latest CD on Basin Street Records, The Game Has Just Begun, including "Hi-Heeled Sneakers," then a rollicking "Big Chief," the Earl King tune generally associated with Fess, then "Iko Iko" with a strong Bo Diddley beat, then another Mardi Gras song ("If you go down to New Orleans/You ought to see the Mardi Gras/etc.," which I first heard performed by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band). At this point s says Butler doesn't need to be playing all these Mardi Gras songs, but they're all crowd pleasers, especially for the out-of-town crowd, and he probably didn't have to rehearse much with the band to do this gig. Next comes "Rockin' Pneumonia" with a Mozart-in-ragtime interlude.

Then we heard some of the Plastic System Band of Martinique, a carnaval parade group with a neverending groove (think the D.C. Go-Go style).

large unsweetened rosemint tea

Next, a brief stop in the Economy Hall tent for the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Band, which b loved, since it reminded her of cartoon music from her childhood. She snapped a few pictures of them:

Then off to the grandstand, where the bathrooms have been rededicated, three out of four, for women, but women still lined up in a long line for the one ladies room on the right side, not knowing there were two more available at the other end.

During a brief count-the-change snafu in the line for the oysters, we heard some of Glennys Rogers and then Star Nayea and Aniyu on the Lagniappe stage. They were generous with the oysters, giving us two to eat while they shucked another fourteen, more than a baker's dozen, for $6.50.

For a brief slideshow, click on the picture of the half-eaten try of oysters:

We wandered over to the very crowded Acura stage for the last tune by the recently reunited subdudes, then popped into the Jazz tent for the end of Donald Harrison presents Indians Blues Revisited (Harrison is a jazz musician - he was in Art Blakey's group with Terence Blanchard when they took over for the older Marsalis sons - but his father was a Mardi Gras Indian chief and he is strongly into fusing his various genres with jazz).

large cochon de lait po'boy (really good!)
large unsweetened rosemint tea
dove bar

Finally we settled in for Cassandra Wilson's set in the Jazz tent. She looked somewhat pregnant and very happy. As usual her band played acousticky, folk-style instruments (her lead guitarist plays a hollowbody and played banjo on one tune, her bass player plays a stand-up bass). Her voice is a strong and sonorous as ever. She lead off with "Lay Lady Lay," did a couple of Joabim tunes, a Dinah Washington song ("Sail On"?), an Abby Ross song, "Drunk Like Cooter Brown" from her first record, and for an encore she did a cool reinterpration of the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville" (by Neil Sedaka, if I'm not mistaken):

The weather was probably the best we ever had, cool and dry for the most part. At the end of the day a few stray fluffy clouds dotted a clear blue sky:

Moise & Alida Viator with Eh, La-Bas!, a surprisingly funky creole fusion. I accidentally capture a few seconds of this couple dancing (with crowds streaming between them and the camera):

[click pictures for larger shots]

When they're done we head for some large iced café au lait, and b buys some earthernware pottery from Dallas. Then I get a seafood salad (popcorn shrimp, fried crawfish, mixed green salad, lemon, tartar/ranch type dressing), b gets crawfish sausage po'boy with mustard, and s gets fried eggplant with crawfish sauce (the big winner, he reminisces about it all day). Then I think it's an hour later than it is and herd us prematurely to the Louisiana Heritage stage, where we catch some of Michael Ward's electric fiddle funk. En route we get a large unsweetened rosemint tea (for b), and a large unsweetened mandarin orange tea (for me).

Then we head over to the Lagniappe Stage for Golden Star Hunters Mardi Gras Indians

...who close out their set with the ol' favorite singalong "Down by the Riverside."

We head into the grandstand for air conditioning, flush toilets, and the photography exhibit, and on the way back out later catch a few bars of Renée McCrary, a rock belter, then head back to the La. Heritage stage for Garage a Trois, now a four-piece featuring Stanton Moore (the drummer from Galactic) and Charlie Hunter on guitar:

...also Skerik on sax and a vibraphone-player/percussionist whose name escapes me.

I ask s to snap another picture of b and me:

We meet e over at the Lagniappe stage and hear some of Alison Brown Quartet. She's an award-winning banjo player and her band is an electro-newgrass-ish outfit. She goes on our "buy at the CD tent" list (along with Eh, La-Bas! and the Canadian group from yesterday). Her encore is called "Shoot the Dog." It's name seems to be derived from the fact that she's walking the dog on the banjo and her electric pianist is shooting the keys in response.

Then it's time for my softshell crab po'boy, b's two Mrs. Wheat's crawfish pies, e's cuban sandwich, and s's caribbean seafood salad. b and i share another large unsweetened rosemint tea and i also get a small frozen café au lait for the sugar/caffeine infusion.

Next we sit in the vastly improved Blues tent, which now has an impromptu sod lawn in the back half, more ventilation, and misters running along two sides to hear a bit of Jeremy Lyons and his trio (guitar, stand-up bass, drums):

As we come in they're finishing up an instrumental version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." We stay in the tent for the Duke Robillard Blues Band:

According to s, Robillard was one of the founders of Roomful of Blues. His first tune is called "Swimming with Lucy" (he says, "I wrote this song for my dog," making this the second dog song of the days, as Alison Brown had said of "Shoot the Dog" that she "wrote this song about my grandmother's dog Woofie").

We head over to the Acura stage to get set up for Bob Dylan's day-closing set. They don't have any bleachers this year (!) so we find a grassy spot to hunker down behind the sea of lawnchairs. I head off to get a large crawfish monica and two bottles of water and then settle in for Dylan's nearly two-hour set:

Dylan setlist (partial)
1 ??
2 Tonight, I'll be Stayin' Here with You
3 Highway 61
4 Things Have Changed
5 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
6 Dignity
7 Mr. Tambourine Man
8 Drifter's Escape (?)
9 By and By
10 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
11 ??
12 ??
13 A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
14 Summer Days
(bows)
encore:
15 Like a Rolling Stone
16 All Along the Watchtower

We're definitely back in the dilettante section. Up closer is the fanatic section. I try to move in for some photos but the crush up front is unbearable. I end up taking pictures of the sky, b, and myself lying in the grass.

I also snap some pictures of Dylan on the monitors, to at least give a feel for what we were seeing:

Overheard conversation while fighting my way back from the frontside:

"I can't believe you left the beers" "There were only 3 left" "But it'll take us 20 minutes to get back there and I'm out!"

I see a guy in the crowd with a bunch of bills of various denomination stapled to his chest. B remembers the line as being about "50 lbs. of hairdye" but I'm pretty sure it's "headlines."

Looks like Charlie Sexton is out of the band on second guitar. There's a new guy, named Koella from Nashville in there. I think the drummer is new too.

I doodled a few sketches but nothing came out all that good.

The weather really cooled off by the end of the day. Another perfect day at the fairgrounds. After that showers, dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, and then to bed (I opt not to go see Yonder Mountain String Band at Twi-Ro-Pa, though I'm sorely tempted) to get ready for Saturday.

Sue W. reminds me that WWOZ is broadcasting much of the Fest.

...took a bunch of pictures, here are just a few (insterspersed among a quick rundown of music and eats)...

large iced café au lait
3 beignets

Hackberry Ramblers (Fais Do-Do stage)
... their 70th anniversary, fresh back from Europe and the Today Show, their 16th straight year at Fest... some technical difficulties, gremlins, intros, 3rd song, Jolie Blonde (Hackberries were the first to record it):

Los Sagitarios (Congo Square stage)
heard en route to:

soft-shell crab po'boy
large unsweetened rosemint tea

back to Hackberries for Johnny B. Goode ("you will be the leader of a Cajun band") and later Proud Mary

spicy crawfish sushi roll

Quintology (Jazz tent)

large mandarin orange tea
crawfish strudel

Ivan Neville's Dumpsta Phunk (Louisiana Heritage stage)

...did, among others, "People Say" by the Meters, an original called "Life's Been Good," "Just Kissed My Baby" ...

the fonk gets b up and dancing:

look at me, I'm so candid:

b takes my picture, I say "howdy":

La Volée d'Castors of Canada (Fais Do-Do)
possibly from Cape Breton?

wild cherry snowball

Revealers (Congo Square)

b get Fest Howahya shirt - this year's pattern is purple and pink crawfish

(b has mango freeze)
(b has softshell crab po'boy, with my help)
large crawfish bread... too big! too cheesy! very spicy
lemonade

Jelly Roll (Economy Hall tent)
Jelly Roll Morton tribute with Vernel Bagneris and Morten Gunnar Larsen... a tad didactic

b gets new straw hat, collapsible, extended brim

Lizz Wright (Jazz tent)

up-and-coming chanteuse, her album comes out in a few weeks, very young (23), rich, mellifluous voice... two originals, an a capella song, a unique arrangement of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" with lyrics by (check this), for her encore she does "Amazing Grace," definitely Gospel-influenced, keep an eye out for her...

[I took over 50 pictures all together, slide show of the best on request.]

Speaking of Earl King, I was sad to read this obituary for Earl King one of the great New Orleans guitarists. (Times userid: mediajunkie, password: mediajunkie)

Most famous outside of NO (and best compensated for) Jimi Hendrix's cover (as "Let the Good Times Roll") of his "Come On," and for the Mardi Gras standard "Big Chief," especially the Professor Longhair version on which he sang and whistled.

Because of our annual pilgrimages, I've had the pleasure of hearing King play, at one point with Snooks Eaglin, no less. As my flight (tomorrow) nears my excitement and anticipation grow.

Plus I just noticed that if I'm willing to stake out a seat in the Jazz tent all day this Sunday I will get to hear Ornette Coleman again!

So I make this new category for my last entry ("Television") and what should come up in my iTunes rotation?

Is the academic world ready for the awesome power of a fully operational mothership? Scot Hacker reports that an article he wrote on Parliament-Funkadelic for a book by Pagan Kennedy has inspired a master's thesis. Now maybe his seminal writings on Liberace will finally get the attention they deserve in the ivory towers of our fine universities.

Damn! I subscribe to Mike Watt's mailing list and wade through tons of announcements for gigs in the southland and then I miss a rare Banyan appearance in an intimate SF room? What's wrong with me? How frustrating. It's been too long since I heard my favorite bass player.

Scot Hacker was there:

To Elbo Room w/Chris, Nada, Mike to see Banyan—Mike Watt (bass) and Nels Cline (guitar), Stephen Perkins (drums), and a small horn section. Each of these guys has a long and mixed history, but as Watt said to an interviewer, "working in our "song" bands is like sitting alone writing, while Banyan is like conversation." An outrageously fluid stomping improvisatory conversation. Watt as always solid and rooted and inventive without being quirky and... [birdhouse.org]

U.S. Special Operations troops are already operating in various parts of Iraq, hunting for weapons sites, establishing a communications network and seeking potential defectors from Iraqi military units in what amounts to the initial ground phase of a war, U.S. defense officials and experts familiar with Pentagon planning said.

Discussing this on the Well, I was told that this news also appeared last fall. Face it, we've been at war with Iraq since 1998 and in some sense since the cease-fire in 1991. They never accepted the legitimacy of the no-fly zones, so there's been a small-scale conflict going on ever since.

This is one reason why I've felt like the debate over the upcoming shooting war, both domestically and internationally, has been a sham. The Bush team made up their mind to "deal with" Iraq on 9/11 or earlier. The UN effort is a matter of getting their ducks in a row, of how to manage and prosecute the invasion and overthrow, not whether.

Frankly, I accept that Bush is the president and that as commander-in-chief it's his call what the greatest threats to our security are, suspicious as I may be of his motives or strategy overall.

Best we get on with the debate of how to mitigate the worst risks of slaughter and instability and how best to reconstruct the country and move on. The "No Blood for Oil" protesters have been suckered into a fool's game, trying to affect a decision that was made months, if not years, ago.

before:

Birdcage from the album "Shmo's Sampler" by Stew and the Negro Problem

after:

OK. Now to post and test the search links.

It now appears that the one-time Camper Van Beethoven reunion shows last fall were some kind of dry run for a more substantial reunion.

Look at all the tour dates listed at the Cracker site.

The show I saw was a great nostalgia trip for me and it seemed to be an almost religious experience for some of the younger folks who missed out on seeing CVB before their untimely breakup around 1989 or '90.

Still, like any reunified band, if they don't work up some new material, the act is going to get stale. Since they were always pretty tight, despite a kind of jammy-loose feel to their arrangements, I thought the show felt a bit like a re-tread, even with Jonathan Segel (I know I always misspell his last name) once again in the band.

Still, it looks like Andrew Bayer may get a chance to see them after all this time around.

I stood out back in the shed listening to the wind pick up and drive the light rain against the walls and fences and trellises. Rose bushes lash the windows even now. The cat and I agreed to go back inside.

Working on a longish blog entry about losing my wallet in New York and the catch-22's around the need to show I.D. to get on an airplane these days. Starring the Tell Me system.

It's the end of the year and I'm trying to clean out my basement of equipment from my old downtown office. I'm getting rid of a UMAX dual-processor supermac (PowerPC) clone, a 486 with monitor, and a 386/doorstop. Also, some keyboards and mouses. Mice? There seem to be a few good places right here in Oakland that will reuse or recycle them responsibly.

B and I agreed no gifts this year, but I took it upon myself to get us the Beck CD she's been wanting since we saw him at the Paramount and the new Dylan bootleg series release, from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. B saw a show on that tour in a high-school auditorium in Augusta, Maine. Apparently no one taped that show but I did once find her a bootleg recording of the show just before it, in a slightly larger New England venue. This tape included the performances of all of the musicians, not just Dylan's set.

Anyway, we just got back from New York and still haven't listened to either of the records yet (though we did listen to a little of the Dolemite LP "This Ain't No White Christmas" my brother A gave me the first night we got back—it survived being checked), but this part of a chockful Ken Layne update really whets my appetite:

My favorite gift hasn't been out of the office CD player in days: the two-disc set from Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder tour. Fantastic. "Just Like a Woman" is on right now, showing off this crazy band: Mick Ronson's spidery lead guitar, pedal steel, violin, Roger McGuinn, T-Bone Burnett, Rob Stoner's bass anchoring the whole thing.

Every song is beautifully done. A bunch have completely different arrangements (normal for Dylan), but what's astounding is how perfectly these new arrangements work. Dylan's voice is at its best: clear, passionate, every word enunciated. He jokes with the crowd, gives friendly thanks for applause, and sounds utterly delighted to be doing these shows. This double CD quickly became one of my all-time favorite live albums ... and it's now one of my favorite Dylan records (along with "Love and Theft," "Blonde on Blonde," "Blood on the Tracks," "Desire" and "Nashville Skyline").

From the first track, you know something good is happening. It's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," transformed from a country ditty to an absolutely rollicking "Beggar's Banquet"-style barroom beauty.

Something similar happens with "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," a song I've always dismissed as preachy. Not here. It's a roadhouse dance tune, with a freight train rumble and a singalong chorus. You can almost smell the goddamned whisky fumes and taste the BBQ ribs. (How the hell did they pull this off in New England?)

The recording is so crisp and alive, it sounds like it was done last week, not a quarter-century ago. Highly recommended, and not just for Dylan fanatics (which I'm not). This is a record for anybody who likes Ziggy Stardust, Wilco, "Exile on Main Street," Beck, the Texas Tornadoes, Johnny Cash, Son Volt, the "O! Brother" soundtrack, Ryan Adams, the Flying Burrito Bros., Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson, the Pretenders, Hank Williams (Sr. or III), and pretty much any good, raw American music.

Robyn Hitchcock daydreams as this week's celebrity guest diary at Slate.

Link courtesy of She's Actual Side, Nationwide, Believe. Given that she has now outed herself as a Robyn fan, and her blog name gives away her TMBG allegiance, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that she is also a fan of Jonathan Richman.

Given that she lives in the Bay Area, I have probably seen her at shows.

But, back to the main point: if you like Hitchcock's rambling surreal between-song patter (somewhat downplayed at his last Great American Music Hall appearance) and his liner notes, not to mention his lyrics, then you already know he is an immensely talented writer. Joe Bob says check it out.

Between the sets of last night's The Other Ones show at the Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland (details to follow), Robert Hunter played for about 40 minutes, just his voice and his tricked-out electric guitar. A lyric stuck with me.

...
I hear the cries of children
And the other songs of war
It's like a mighty melody
That rings down from the sky
Standing here upon the moon
I watch it all go by.

Maybe you had to be there.

I just burned my first music cd ever. With many technological advances I am the consummate late adopter. I like to let other people beta test the new techne at premium rates and jump in when the thing has proven itself and become consumer-easy. I waited till I bought a computer that could burn cd's with a single click.

Using iTunes it was easy to come up with a 79-minute mix, and after ten minutes, the new platter was burned. It took me almost that long to write out the 22-song list longhand. Playing the cd in my stereo was/is a thrill (I'm on track 8 of the live playback — everything sounds fine.)

I used to make cassette mixes all the time, several a year at least, but it's been quite a few years now since my last one, and I buy a lot less new music.

Here's the setlist:

first mix (4 moo)

1. And Your Bird Can Sing (Beatles)
2. Downtown Train (Tom Waits)
3. From Me to You (Persuasions)
4. Here Comes Your Man (Pixies)
5. Kidney in a Cooler (Keller Williams)
6. Last Girl on Earth (Supreme Beings of Leisure)
7. Nitemare Hippy Girl (Beck)
8. O Death (Camper Van Beethoven)
9. Play with Fire (Rolling Stones)
10. Psychedelic Baby (Dudley Moore)
11. Rehab (Stew)
12. Rigor Mortis (Meters)
13. Ruben Remus (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14. She's Too Much for My Mirror (Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band)
15. Stereo (Pavement)
16. The Only Minority (Minutemen)
17. They Love Each Other (Jerry Garcia Band)
18. Tropicalia (Beck)
19. Venus de Milo (Television)
20. Waste (Phish)
21. When We Collide (k.d. lang)
22. Wild Horses (Old & in the Way)

Last night I saw the Flaming Lips open for Beck and then back him for the second half of his set. Good show, interesting alchemy. I have all of Beck’s records except his most recent one. And I only have the most recent Lips record, but I’ve listened to it a lot and plan to work my way backward in their increasingly noisy ouevre (kind of like surfing back through the Meat Puppets’ output).

Outside the Paramount I asked Bill and Jeff if they read the album the same way I do. To me, it sounds like Yoshimi loses to the pink robots. (She sure does a lot of screaming in part two of her battle.) Bill thought I was taking it all too literally, and that it’s not a concept album outside of that song or maybe a few others in the first half. Jeff wasn’t sure. He thought Yoshimi won.

It may well be that I’m taking the whole rock opera conceit too seriously here. The story, if it exists, does get vaguer as the record wears on, and like most rock ‘n’ roll, just about every track can be read as a love song. There are songs where the lyrics can mean one thing if said between two lovers and another if part of a sci-fi storyline (“you and me/were never meant to be/part of the future,” for example).

What follows is what textual basis I can find for my reading of the story, from the teensy lyrics in the liner materials of the CD.

I haven't found much to argue with in Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, but then I'm also a huge Pixies fan.

Let me put it this way: if not for Doolittle, there would be no Pitchfork. In other words, the influence of this record is so vast that, fifteen years on, it has altered the course of your life at this very moment.

"Hope I die before I become Pete Townsend," wrote Cobain in his diary. Pete doesn't seem offended so much as saddened in his review of the just-published journals of the suicidal muse of the '90s.

It is desperately sad for me to sit here, 57 years old, a huge chunk of life still ahead of me, and contemplate how often wasteful are the deaths of those in the rock industry. We find it so hard to save our own, but must take responsibility for the fact that the message such deaths as Cobain's sends to his fans is that it is in some way heroic to scream at the world, thrash a guitar, smash it up and then overdose.

Sad news via MZ: Run DMC DJ Killed

Jam Master Jay, né Jason Mizell, was shot by two gunmen at a NY recording studio, cops say. He was 37.

Let's pour some libation on the ground for old-school rapper. Run DMC was the soundtrack of my college years (one of, at least, along with Futura 2000 and the rest of that crowd). Back in the day...

My old buddy JG turned me on to Flaming Lips (finally) and when they added a second Beck opened for and backed by the Lips show, we got tickets, so I'm psyched about that. Yoshimi reminds me a little of OK Computer, but it's hugely catchy and grooving. I can't remember the last time I liked a new record so much.

Anyway, Jeff tells me Beck will appear with Flaming Lips on the Conan O'Brien show tonight (from the Flaming Lips mailing list, apparently):

Catch the Flaming Lips and Beck tonight, Tuesday October 29th, as they perform together on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien." Then, the Lips will return to Conan's studio on Thursday, October 31st, to perform on their own. Conan starts his show at 12:35am, so make sure to record the appearances if that's too late for your blood.