Tortoise on Chic A Go Go

Pert awesome!

COYote CAMero

They're playing tomorrow at the Elbo Room. CHeck It!

(up the vocals!)

Take a Drive

With the Skygeen Leopards

Flatbush Foot Brigade

Da Region doing it's thing circa '94


"The band that would fight... you, them, the other bands, the sound guy, and each other... They didn't sell any records; they played hard ass rock-n-roll and didn't care if you liked it or not because they liked it, and your girlfriend, she liked it too.

They were from Hammond and they knew what that meant. It was all on the line, all the time, and they were playin for keeps.

They played hard and loud rock-n-roll music and they meant it, every damn note. It was never about anything else..."
-Anonymous

Well for what it's worth, I think this nugget has held up pretty well.
C'mon, git it here!
Photo courtesy of joasia242
Analog rip courtesy of the jimschu

Over the Edge

I saw this movie as a kid on early cable an it left an impression on me. Seems that it is a greatly exaggerated story based on events in a overly planned community just south of San Francisco called Foster City.
Apparently they had a bit of a problem with what they later called Mouse Packs which was recounted in a 1974 article in the SF Chronicle (I can't find this anywhere-the internet has failed me). That said, they were just a bunch of bored teenagers as far as I can tell. Early parts of the movie were a bit like my teenage memories, moreso anyway, than say Suburbia (which I liked a lot too-say, when are those Decline movies gonna come out on DVD anyways?). I will say that Over the Edge is worth (re-)watching. As a side-note, it's Matt Dillon's debut and the the soundtrack is primarily made up of Cheap Trick.

Junk Yard

Some things roaming loose in the Forest reminded me to put up this little gem from a German teevee show.

Henry Hills - SSS

Some kind of of beauty emerging from the rubble of the streets of a pre-gentrified East Village.



I had no idea that Tom Cora & Kramer had worked together.

Melvins & Big Business

A History Of Bad Men

Sharpies!

Nice Slice.


Lobby Lloyde and the Coloured Balls play "G.O.D.", Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs on the bill (neither seen), 1974 in Melbourne

Via Wikkipedia:

Sharpies (also known as Sharps) were membersof suburban youth gangs in Australia mainly from the 1960s to 1980s, particularly in Melbourne, but also in Sydney and Perth to a lesser extent.

The term comes from their focus on looking sharp. The dress and dance styles were strongly influenced by the British ska, mod and skinhead subcultures, and many of the Sharpies were British immigrants, recently arrived as Common clothing items included Lee or Levi's jeans, sweaters and T-shirts (often designed by individual members). Sharpies would try to outdo fellow sharpies by creating the best patterns, colours and detail. Sharpies were known for being violent, although a strict moral code was also evident.

Sharpies were very much a social thing in Melbourne, where the main gangs — Westside, Southside and Northside — would meet up with the smaller groups such as Prahran Sharps, Melbourne Sharps and the A A Sharps, from the Broadmeadows region usually at Flinders Street Station in the mid 1970s. It wasn't unusual for there to be hundreds of Sharpies milling about. They often went to dances and early discos, and because of sheer numbers, they were almost untouchable by the police. This led to excessive violence on behalf of the Sharpies, who would basically fight who they wanted, and take beer and money from who they wanted. The Sharpies subculture faded out due to mistrust between gangs and excessive violence.

In south-east Sydney, a gang from the La Perouse area (called La Pa by the locals) were known as the Lapa Sharpies. In Perth, youths in areas such as Medina, Rockingham, Armadale, Kelmscott, Lynwood and Thornlie joined skinhead/Sharpie gangs. Many of these young people were children of recently arrived British migrants who built and ran the BP Kwinana Oil Refinery.

Ethiosonic Lunch

Popped down to Pritzker Pavilion at lunch to catch The Ex + Gétatchèw Mèkurya. It was great. The Ex (Terrie, Andy, Kat & Sok) had assembled a crack group of jazz musicians. Gétatchèw Mèkurya was a fine saxophonist with a playful demeanor and lyrical sound as he shuffled around doing a kind of two-step. I watched for an hour or so before I had to trek back to the salt mines. During the last few songs that I witnessed, this young cat took the stage and executed some vigorous Ethiopian Jewish “shoulder” dancing (eskesta)-holy crap, this guy was good-I wish could have captured some of it on film. I will likely pick this up.

T7

Had a pretty fantastical experience at T2. Terrastock 7 finds itself in in Louisville. Apparently it's going to be in an old meat packing plant done up all artsy-like. Got my tickets, how bout you?
We ask you to ride.

Ok, let's go!

Can't we all just get a bong?

Trees, mountaintops, desert, stones:

Heavy - the Movie

"...so there's a physical side of it where the stuff is so heavy and the notes so low...where they are playing at such a low level you actually shit your pants or something like that..."

"The sounds...would actually come up through my pants...my skirt and I could feel the sounds physically changing my body."

"It's been a really mournful time for everyone I know"
"Some people make music and it's to put things out of their mind and they believe that what they can do musically for others is escapism"

And I am all about the escapism.

Days like these let you savor a bad mood

FUCKING COLD tonight. Not so bad today...32ish, went to Elephant & Castle w/about 20 coworkers. Got my drink on. My car was at The Double K's, so I was gonna take the Metra back up to get it & then back to mine...walked out of the bar...wait...oh no...this morning I used the last on my "10 ride" ticket that has been floating in my wallet for months...$0 in pocket at this point, mind you...now I have to take the El to the bus. Blue line it...no prob there. I get off the train & walk a few blocks in the BITTER cold to Fullerton to catch the bus which passes as I approach. BALLS! Lost my gloves in the bar...totally inexplicable, since my gear never moved more than 10 feet...I am too cool for a hat and of course I still do not own a winter coat well into my, what 4th winter here?
I am not going to just stand at the stop and wait, so I walk up Fullerton, the sub-zero wind BLASTING my my face right off. I walk the route & eventually a bus rolls up. AHH. Plenty of intrestin' characters to figure, while I rub my life back into my frozen hands. A quick phone call reveals that KK is waylaid outta Vegas & is stuck in Dallas. I warm up in her joint, all my extremities hurting/burning/itching until I finally achieve a comfortable state while I type this out. Fuck it, I say...I am staying the night here....

Let's not kid ourselves. It gets really really bad.

“...Part of falling into the routine has to do with what's happened already. For instance, when I went to do press for American Water in 1998, I got in a terrible fight and got kicked in the head and had a boot-print on my head. You can see it on the cover of the Hot as Hell 7". These guys walked all over my face. Like everyone else, I didn't have any health insurance, and I couldn't afford to do anything about it. So for years, I had a bum ear and a bum eye. It was happening really slowly with my eye. It turned out that I had this thing called Keratoconus, which is like a growth on your eye. It can start from a really bad blow to the head. You get this knotty, sort of like a hill grows up on your eye, where the eye is supposed to be a dome. And so the light comes in, it goes all different directions. You really don't see anything. You see light. It's really more like looking through a soapy window.
So over the years, my eyes were getting so bad, but I was so messed up that I didn't realize it. It sounds like a joke, you know, "you were so fucked up you didn't know that you couldn't see out of your eye." Obviously, there were periods when I was sober. But I was asleep for a lot of things. And that was one of them. When I got sober, it was really upsetting to me that I couldn't see. I only had one eye. And there were all these other injuries I had. I had a broken foot, and I had really messed up teeth and all these different physical problems...”

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

You should come by my place on the 10th. Inquire within.

`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked.

`There isn't any,' said the March Hare.

`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily.

`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the March Hare.

`I didn't know it was your table,' said Alice; `it's laid for a great many more than three.'

`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

`You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; `it's very rude.'

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower

Here the cold is beginning & so I am finding myself starting to slip, ever so imperceptibly, into hibernation mode. Cooking more, eating more for that matter, sweatering (Oh! How I’ve missed you...so much so that I will even forgive the part of you that isn't cashmere.), refusing invitations, celebrating my unbridled adoration of The TiVo. Windshield scrapers w/ergonomic handles are found in the closet, faulty furnaces discovered, scrabbling for a mate so as to not go it alone (Sure she’s annoying, my friends can’t stand her and she is a chronic liar who is into Kabala, but what am I supposed to do? Just till May...just till May), plans made more than a day in advance, twinges of holiday dread seep to fore from aft, blinds stay drawn more & more (it’s always dark out there anyway & what am I-in a fishbowl?). Discrepancies of day and night, the screaming and the silence become concrete. The skies are crisp & clear now-one of the few advantages of the season here. Regrets of possibly wasting the season just past (checks scorecard and determines that there was little waste. Gore would be proud.) The schizophrenic shallow swimming of summer shimmers off like a vapor trail or like a Moab mirage. That said, plenty of flickering thoughts of summer now come into plain view. Many questions with the luxury of time to answer them. Leaves fall. Clouds rain. Gravity dictates that our speeches will settle. Waves crash on the shore. Even the bird who soars must take respite on a grounded perch. The seasons here leave me asunder in a way I have forgotten. In SF no real seasons existed per se, which somehow stymied me. Maybe I have been unknowingly more in tune with the Midwest dynamisms (Yes I know, if I wasn't before, I'm certainly in trouble now.) all along or perhaps it is simply a function of adaptation.
All my joys to this are folly
Naught so sweet as melancholy

Honest

Weekend last went to check The Shoes all due to The Jim Shu giving me a random call Friday. I had somehow overlooked them completely in the Great Performers of Illinoise series in The Millennium Park area. Really sweet power pop. It felt oh so right in the afternoon sun. That Sunday The Poster Chilluns played out in the same area. It felt really good and I realize that they don't sound a bit dated (does that sound like a backhanded compliment? It's really not meant to). Really energetic and fun.

On Saturday I went to BB's birthday/pool party (on the right day this time) and it was just great, idyllic (once the all the kids left-they for some reason believed that I was some kind of pool jungle gym), I didn't want to go home.

up and at them

Lately, days are being lost like pencils, buttons. I need to get something down here because my memories inevitably end up like colored balls in a ping pong pool; when I go looking for a particular one it is tough to find.
So I make an attempt to piece it together.
I spent the 4th at Teh Face's for an unexpected (why?) gourmet (yum) experience with rarely seen good friends.














Abba was in town. Fantastic to see him. I am heading out his way soon, and am hoping to meet up with him & Wu for some dinner. I figgr that i will need to use the BART at some point as The Bridge will be out of commission for at least a part of my visit. Fucking unbelievable engineering feat, if you ask me.














Saturday i went to The Birthday Party That Was Next Week...needless to say I was the sole attendee. Where is my mind these days? I swear, sometimes there is an almost audible click proceeding the slow, quiet ooze, leaving my brain quiet and empty, autopilot kicks in and there I stand, in the empty back yard.

Sunday met up with North Side Irish for a viewing of Miike's Happiness of the Katakuris. I had no idea what to expect other than Miike's usual fuckuppedness. Not so. Hilarious, madcap and Broadway-ish, yet dark and disturbing, both excessive and subtle. Awkward songs of suicide and uplifting ballads of joy. Awesome.

"I don't want to kill Mailer...

...but I must kill Kingsley."
Rip Torn & Norman Mailer go at it on the set of Maidstone.

This scene from the movie looks pretty unstaged to these jaded eyes-the blood from Mailer's Tyson-style ear-bitin' certainly isn't. Whether real or no, it makes me a touch uncomfortable to watch.
Mailer was known for his ego and Torn (who may or may not have some tendencies his own self) reputedly was frustrated with the Direction of the film.

Drumgazzim

77 drummers on 7/7/07. A Drum Spiral consisting of the who's-who of the here & now in the Vortex of the the planet (according to some). Apparently Eye and Boredoms Yo, Yoshimi, and Senju were in the center on a stage with the three drum kits facing towards the very center, where Eye was controlling effects on the drums and vocals. He also had 8 horizontal guitar-like instruments that he controlled by hitting them with a broomstick or some sort of three-pronged scepter.

Oh, and Dear Vice, I hate you.




See the Flickerset also.

Your Ballroom Days Are Over, Baby

A night which has seems to have triggered an interesting meme-like effect of romanticized memories from a fairly specific time period. While different for everyone, in this case The Sonic Youth being the common thread (Strikes me as ironical that Death Valley '69 seemed to eschew the hippieness of the '60s by pointing out its dark, dangerous side, but now SY are our Dead). Sister and the following Daydream Nation happened while these Folks were starting higher academic endeavors, setting out on their own and voyaging in various ways. Plenty of naiveté on all our parts-but less a vainglorious pursuit than the purest form of experimentation, as if we were the first to tread this territory. For myself, it was fairly nihilistic time, preparing as I was for The Service (Admittedly a less than academic endeavor) and I therefore felt freed to behave as I wished with little social obligation (something I have not known before or since). It was a time that was formative and involved an overindulgence that I still hold to be entirely necessary and entirely unregrettable, but I am still left with mixed feelings about the whole thing. It was a period that on one hand I am not especially proud. Sometimes I am left wondering if certain people don't perceive me as something that I am not as a result of this time, but these are not my friends at this point-so who cares really? I was for whatever reason, spending an inordinate amount of time at LU, living there in fact, and I suppose this fed into a certain amount of mystery around me confronted as I was at one point, in a conspiratorial whisper at the cafeteria table, "I heard (She leaning forward after the most pregnant of pauses, glancing furtively left, then right... that you don't even go to school here"). On the other hand, it is an enduring time packed to the gills with indelible memories during which time I gained a (recently unearthed) nickname, met a lot of people who would later effect my life greatly. Not so much steer it as much give it a nudge here & there; introductions that later led to new friends, living situations, girlfriends and the like. One of the beauties and powers of music is that whether it operates as a bridge, or a mere soundtrack, it can really cement some shit. A common ground, a shared (self) perception amongst disparate people.

Steve Albini's Blues

I have to say that I am sick to death of the ride to Hammond and back. There is nary a bit of romance left-that fruit is squeezed dry as a nun's gusset-but I soldier on for a Friday nite dinner of State Line Pizza with the Family Unit at Home.













It is The Bean's birthday, and the celebrations spill over to the Flat Rock tap with his crew, Becks, Damionic and the usual decadence with mexichrome.
Somewhere in the evening, I agreed to go down to the Redneck Riviera in the morning with the family sans Bean. After much futzin, we hit the road & headed down to my parents' lake house for some basking & boating.

(B&W photos courtesy of The Dargis)

I stay down there through Sunday evening, take my ass back to Chicago, a little more worn & redder, to prepare for the coming week.

Making the Nature Scene

After the din of the 4th's detonations, it was decided that the best course of action was for Em & I to make use of our coincidentally matching days away from work for gettin outta town. Thursday morning I tried out my new (to me) Polish deli around the corner & scored some really delicious foodstuffs. It was funny because nothing was labeled in the joint and the lady helping me, while pleasant enough, was not too forthcoming about the various choices ("What kind of cheese is that?" "Polish Cheese." "Um, sure a 1/4 pound of that then"). After the foraging, I hopped in my sad little jalopy (Sure, she ain't much to look at, but runs well enough) to pick up the girl and off to Matthiessen. The drive was ok considering-Illinoise ain't much to look at any more than Indiana is: Corn, corn soybeans, corn. We did some hikings and pokings amid the pretty dalles and waterfalls. A genuinely nice day and it was such a welcome getaway. I've been embarrassingly negligent where the out-of-doors are concerned. I have been snobbish towards the whole thing since I have moved back from the gorgeousities of the West, but I am coming around.
So from there we wander into the biker-friendly town of Utica, with its block-long Mainstreet, for some nourishment. We end up at Duffy's and after some shepherd's pie & conversating with the locals. The Idea was sprung from The Waters of Knowledge; is there a nice B&B handy? At first the Landers House was in contention, but it ended with the more economical choice of The Willows, a mere 2 blocks away from where we were perched. An excellent place (considering all its vaguely forced country-ness). In the morning we popped into the Nodding Onion for breakfast. It was a quaint home converted into a quaint restaurant with middling food & the slowest wait staff ever. Hopped back in the cage for the bittersweet ride back to civilization, dropped Em at home, and then suffered the unnecessarily long ride back to mine. But wait...it is now The Bean's birthday & I need to get down to Ham-Vegas to recognize his 26th...

Independence Day

USA, USA...The beginning of 5 days away from the jobby. I spent last night in a condo with the finest view of the fireworks, both man made & the later, more impressive version, courtesy of mother nature with beautiful crazy spiderwebbing lightening. On the downside, it was a shrill karaoke & pirate themed dealy in the Viagra Triangle.
The 4th itself started with a trip down to Hyde Park for a Mellow Yellow brunch-not what I remember from my childhood, but yummy nonetheless. My breakfast crepe was hefty, but not nearly as delicious as Em's crepes Normandie. Humboldt Park is a crazy beautiful war zone at the moment.

Happy Birthday

It's dad's birthday today. Not too many pictures of him handy. This is the first time he ever saw me, because unfortunately he was in Vietnam when I was born.