No One Likes Everything

Xerox this!

2008-06-11T22:39:00.001-04:00

If blogs is the new zines, this blog is old zines.

Punks Is Hippies is the swap I always wanted.

High Places!

2008-06-10T17:00:00.002-04:00

A little light for me, but I dig the polyrhythms. High Places from Brooklyn via Stereogum (it's old, but so what? Long tail, bitches.)

Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

2008-05-25T17:54:00.001-04:00

The new Silver Jews—

First song, Sound Poem Anthology

Second song, CONVOY

He makes me wonder about my own age, which, God, I hoped I'd never get to that point. Goddamned Nudie suits, do they even fit?

I'm not sure if, as someone who's been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, I can even listen to "Suffering Jew Boy." Oh, wait, Jesus, that's "Suffering Jukebox." Oh, man, I'm sorry. I was just off on some train of thought about how my father used to point out Jews, like Chevy Chase on that Law and Order rerun (Chevy Chase now even kind of looks like a fat version of my father), and thinking about how Jewishness was always pointed out as kind of a neat somewhat obscure factoid, like "That guy? Racecar driver." "Oh, really? Never would have guessed."

Anyway, man, Berman loves reverb and reverb loves Berman—he sounds like what you'd like all poets to sound like, instead of the stuttering, weedy voices pregnant with pause of all the poets that I had to sit through at school assemblies.

I tried to interview Berman once, for his last album. I was counting on him getting back to me and I got too close to the deadline and only got back a one-line answer to all of the stuff I'd emailed him about because he couldn't commit to a regular phone call time. It was all pissy, like he was going through a perfunctory "I'm difficult with interviewers" character sketch. At least half of it was my fault, since I wanted to just get a basic sense of him before I interviewed him, so that I could ask questions about his answers, and I realize now that all of the questions that I sent looked clumsy and oafish.

Back to poets and their voices: I do understand that Berman regards his poetry and his songwriting as separate, while connected. But he's too clever and too verbal for his songs to ever really be evaluated separately, at least for me. That brings me back to a regular problem I have with the Silver Jews and Pavement and a certain faction of indie rock in general, in that I tend to enjoy the music more than I enjoy the words, which I like to think of as just kind of an endless stream of things that sound good. I have a hard time listening to Ted Leo anymore, after my girlfriend's brother-in-law (God, I need a Masai word for that or something) started trying to explain to me what each of the songs meant.

And the problem is that Berman's words are the only thing that distinguish his music anymore—the rest could be Nashville music from any time after Warren Zevon. At least that sort of vague one-man timelessness (though his wife is on there, I doubt she gets annoyed when it's constantly assumed to be Berman's show) makes it easy to just listen to the album without needing it or loving it or keeping it close, and hard to imagine that Berman won't keep on making this album or ones like it in the future.

Just did it

2008-05-22T17:05:00.000-04:00

Mike 23 sued.

Pissy rant on gay marriage

2008-05-22T00:38:00.002-04:00

I realize this is probably better served by posting it on a livejournal, but the recent gay marriage foofaraw led to this guy posting this on Metafilter:

This is a regrettable decision. I oppose gay marriage as flying in the face of four or five thousand years of civilization and religion. If Californians want to be that arrogant and create gay marriage, so be it. The thing is, Californians referendum-ed against it, but several judges don't give a shit.That's unacceptable.

And this was my response:
Aw, BrooklynCouch, that's just gonna leave me with a rant…

I mean, let's start off with the argument from tradition, or "The world's always been flat." Then the implicit assumptions that gay marriage has been "created" by California, and that constructed things are somehow less valid than scare-quoted "traditional" things. And let's cap it off with the argument from the masses, that unjust laws that reflect the will of the people should stand—did you fail 10th grade civics? (We're in a Republic … Checks and balances … Majoritarianism … Federalist papers etc.)

Why don't you want gays to get married? Where is the harm to you, personally?

I mean, look, people do all sorts of shit that I disagree with (though I don't happen to disagree with gay marriage). People watch NASCAR, people listen to Rush Limbaugh (and weirder Christian craziness), people believe that the government caused the 9/11 attacks, people believe that other people's rights should be restricted based on superstitious biases and foolish half-logic.

But it doesn't harm me, not enough to justify taking away their right to do it. And I tend to believe that when it comes to expanding freedom, the place to do it is here in America and not in Iraq. We can expand the understanding and protection of people's inherent right to do what makes them happy.

And that's not a good idea because we haven't already recognized that right? I mean, that's all an argument from tradition is—a circle where we do things because that's the way we've done things. Or it's not a good idea because a lot of other people don't think it's a good idea? Well, frankly, I've never heard a good argument against gay marriage. I mean, what legitimate objection could there be? It'll lower tax revenues?

There really isn't one. People will repeat the talking points without taking that single goddamned moment to think, "Really?"

What pisses me off isn't just how dumb that is, and how instantly it marks anyone I'm talking to as politically retarded, but that this should be a source of pride. Instead of the technology race of the 20th Century, we could be in a race to make America the best country in the world, the country that has the most respect for human rights and freedoms. But no, we're behind fucking Canada and the Netherlands when it comes to this. I hope we elect a minority president and spread legal recognition for gay marriage across the country and across the globe.

Where's your pride, man? Why do you want the country to keep doing things the way it has been when that way is fundamentally unfair? Don't you want to be an American and stand up for somebody who's been treated unjustly?

I'm going to try to rewrite this into something soon.

BIBLICAL GIANTS

2008-05-14T00:06:00.003-04:00

When I was driving Amy out to LA, we stopped at a gas station in the middle of goddamned nowhere. When we went up to pay, behind the counter was a fat, ruddy girl of 19 or 20, and her name-tag read "Magon."

"So, I gotta ask, how'dya say your name?" I venture.
"Megan. When I was born, my dad didn't know how to spell Megan."

For the next day and a half, Amy and I recounted the adventures of GON and MAGON.

Yungberg?

2008-05-10T18:17:00.001-04:00

I went to the Epic Yung Berg preview Thursday (I can't be the only one who subconsciously wants to yid-ify him, calling him Youngberg mentally).

Here are my notes (since we weren't allowed to record anything, all I've got is ugly short-hand):

Berg gives brief intro. Berg believes that he is "Empowering young people to take it to the next level … keep God and all things are possible," etc.

He produced the entire album except for two tracks, and he calls this "new sound" "the Spaceship." It's all auto-tuned with a lot of echo, chime-y synth arpeggios. He's got the system up way too loud, so it sounds like shit. "The Business" is booty-call track with silly metaphor, good radio sound. Lots of compression, no dynamics. More radio than club track. He's partial to the DMX-ish shout "Hey!"

His label didn't understand "what I'm all about." "If I come from Sexy Can I to Sexy Lady, I'm gonna be the sexiest dude alive."

Do Dat There video: Big cold jam, lots of black and white, hey—those are the street drummers in front of the Art Institute! Warm, sustained bass. Sure does like that plinking toy piano. I like the instructions re: wad. Makes it officially dance track. "It was important that this came out with no co-signer. I got no co-signer, no, like Fiddy says he's cool. I'm New Wave."

"One Night" has toy piano again. Sharp bass, but mixed for shit. Supercompressed. Sure likes the posturing, spoken word interludes.

"This is the track I'm most proud of." Called "Outer Space." Phase shifting, more auto-tune. He stops the track to tell us he really sang it. It's apparent—his voice is really thin. Should have doubled it. Falls back on "Hey!", more tinkly piano. Bridge is tight. Nice spacey sound. Makes me want to get him to listen to Charles Earland.

"Manager" has more chime washes, better hook than "One Night," lots of string sweeps. Weird pimp metaphor—doesn't want to be boyfriend, just take 20% of proceeds (wonder if he knows that managers usually get 10). "They don't coordinate your do with your shoes/like I do." Way too long on bridge.

That's pretty much it, we were only there pretty briefly. For some reason, he came up to me an initiated a complicated dap-tap. He has a lot of lotion on his hands.

New records!

2008-04-08T00:44:00.005-04:00

Went to the local used store, here's what I bought and what I paid (only listened to a couple so far):

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Damn The Torpedoes, $3. Listened. Always kinda curious about this album, worth the $3 for at least two pretty good songs on each side (singles, mostly).

Boulder, s/t, $3. Listened. I was high when I bought it and loved the synths on the opener, "Join me in LA." Realized too late that it was a Warren Zevon cover and the rest of the album was kinda trad '70s boogie bullshit; that they sound like they look (see photo). I feel vaguely ripped off, but the Zevon tune is pretty sweet.

Horslips, The Man who Built America, $2. Listened. Side one is this fantastic new wave pop fest, with plenty of hooks and dudes singing to chicks about missing them and stuff. Then, as I'm listening to it, I look 'em up on wikipedia and see that they were an Irish folk rock band that mostly did concept albums, and that The Man Who Built America was their "heavy" album that alienated fans. As I read this, side two starts feeling like they were in the studio and said "Oh, right, we need a concept," and they started plugging away at missing ol' Blarney or whatever the fuck the Irish call it. Still, OK, just markedly less good than the first side, which was awesome. Easily worth $8.

Thee Image, Inside the Triangle, $8. Listening. So, apparently, my four-or-so needle drops totally mistook the character of the band—I thought they were some weirdo disco band with a lot of trippy Hammond organ and space oscillators. Which they are, but they're also a buttrock band on "All Night Long," a decent funk-rock band on "I.O.U.s", a shitty sub-10cc ballad band on "Rapture of the Deep," and prone to prog pretensions through-out. Which makes it kind of funny to see the folks here (also the folks hosting the image) begging for the guy to re-up it. I dunno. Maybe if I had a rapidshare account, it would be worth downloading it, but I can't imagine I'd ever want to share it enough to upload it. Not worth $8, even though I may raid it for mixtapes.

Cheetah, Rock & Roll Women, $4. Not listened. From the needle drops, they sound like Suzi Quatro's rockin' tracks, which I like. Two sisters, like Heart, vaguely big-hair attractive, like Heart.

Grace Jones, Warm Leatherette, $3. Not listened. In-store preview? Well, I know the title track from a cover by The Normals, it's got Sly and Robbie producing and playing on it, and it has a cover of "Love is the Drug." It should be good, right? EDIT: Whups. From looking at All Music, it seems that the Normals did the original.

Eric Burdon and the Animals, The Twain Shall Meet, $2. Not listened. I like his voice, and most of the stuff I've heard on either side of this (Animals, War). Couple of drops sounded promising, even if the album's a bit beat and fuzzy.

Golden Earring, Moontan, $4. Not listened. To be honest, four bucks is about twice what I'd pay just to own "Radar Love," but the rest of the album sounded promising too.

Night Soil Man, Garden of Delights, $3. Not listened. A couple of drops gave a dark post-punk vibe, and a little googling shows that they turned into Drive Like Jehu and inspired some story. I'm really looking forward to the album, but haven't been in a scary evil vinyl mood, so am kind of hesitant.

Muxtape!

2008-04-01T02:16:00.000-04:00

Muxtape

So, that's what book reviews are like, huh?

2008-03-31T23:33:00.003-04:00

Jerry Fodor reviews Kripke: Names, Necessity and Identity by Christopher Hughes.

This is the sort of thing that I am only moderately qualified to read, and not at all qualified to write, though I do like the ever-present pull of questions against "truths" in philosophy. Via Metafilter.

Story ending prompted by O. Henry Prize winners anthology

2008-03-31T23:32:00.001-04:00

A man jumps out and yells, "Gotcha!" Then everything is the opposite.

0330080059a.jpg

2008-03-30T04:01:00.001-04:00

0330080059a.jpg
Originally uploaded by joshsteich

Crystal antlers. On a hill.

BASEBALL!

2008-03-27T01:14:00.002-04:00

After watching this movie from Thomas Jefferson (from this Metafilter thread), I got curious about the defunct league that was playing (the Atlantic League's Newark Colts, though I can't tell who they were playing against), and stumbled onto this explication of minor-league baseball in Danbury, Connecticut (the one state that I always have trouble spelling). Or "Hat-town" as it was apparently known, in that time before catchy nicknames.
There's also this neat chronology of the year that Edison filmed the game, which briefly mentions Lizzie (Arlington) Stroud, who was the first woman to play professional baseball, albeit only for one game (she pitched).

And if the focus isn't narrowed enough, there's the Minor League Baseball Researcher, which has a bunch of California League stats and some interesting descriptions. Too bad it's not regularly updated, but we're all in the long tail here.

AskMe?

2008-03-23T01:19:00.001-04:00

Questions I have:

How best to stream radio from my computer to my office without it raising the suspicions of the IT department or costing me money.

What was the Arab world like immediately prior to Mohamed?

Party at Cohn's

2008-03-23T00:57:00.002-04:00

And it was all Michigan folk. Tasty dip, good easter egg hunt. Stepped out to go to dinner at Sky's Tacos, was delicious. Had a vegetarian torta, Amy had burrito. Both failed qua generis (open-face burrito, sandwich needed fork) but were DEL-ICIO-US on their own merits.

50000

2008-03-22T17:16:00.000-04:00

50000 songs on Last.fm.

Foursquare!

2008-03-22T01:50:00.001-04:00

We're starting to bandy about some sort of scorekeeping, Amy and I, so we can finally know that I'm better.

Meetup!

2008-03-22T01:44:00.003-04:00

Then we did this too. As Amber cals 'em, my internerd friends.

Then the parents came

2008-03-22T01:15:00.003-04:00

And this is what we did:

My folks: Beach, Thai Boom, Tacos La Flama, Broad, Hammer (Kara Walker makes me racist), Gemini printers, pool, big breakfasts. Wrote up a review for LARECORD.com. Stressed out.

Her folks: Hiking in Temicula or something. Temescal? Some canyon and state park. I enjoyed the walk, but I kinda ran out of things to say. Long Beach Aquarium was OK. If I'd paid, I woulda been annoyed. They had a Prius and didn't get it at all. Couldn't get the doors to stay locked. Number one reason to not get a Prius? While at a stoplight, I somehow managed to screw around with the dash computer and it froze, then rebooted, leaving us stalled. Ate at some Italian Place (Maria's?) in Westwood, and it was the damned dullest Italian food possible. Too sweet, too much. We also ate at the Boston Pizza Company in Long Beach.

I note Boston is not known for their pizza.

Mariachis?

2008-03-22T01:00:00.003-04:00

We went, a couple weekends ago, down to Mariachi Plaza, in the Boyle Park neighborhood, to see if we could find mariachis to photograph. It had been described, third-hand, as a place where mariachis gathered in huge flocks, like parrots. Instead, it was, like, three guys. I was hoping for more festive photos, but instead (especially with the construction for a new train line and station) it was kind of squalid and gray. Luckily, we met up with my then-coworker Justin (on to better things now, I hope) at La Serenada de Garibaldi (spelling?) for dinner.

I went with the potato tacos, which were light and pretty tasty, though kind of monotextural. Amy went with the gorditas with mixed vegetables, which were better. They were one of those restaurants that, guessing purely, seemed like they'd do seafood well. I mean, they seemed to do well with crisp, delicate textures and I'd bet that fish works well with that, at least the tacos. The gorditas seemed less incomplete.

I will say that the chili sauce there was really excellent, and some of the best I've ever had.

We also got to see a bit more of the neighborhood. There was a housing development htat really reminded me of Arrowwood. Too bad the commute would kill me.

SAFETY!

2008-03-01T22:13:00.002-05:00

While reading this question on Ask Metafilter, in which the asker refers to some putative "Paul Reiser Effect," I remembered being in elementary school and how after you farted, you had to yell "Lou Rawls!" first, otherwise someone could hit you.

I have no fucking idea why.

I remember asking my dad "Why Lou Rawls?" when I was a kid, and while he hadn't heard of it, he speculated that Lou Rawls' rich baritone was some talisman.

Anyway, I think we just kind of misheard something or other and it caught on because elementary school boys are prone to adhering to arbitrary rules about farting enforced with violence.

I think the "Paul Reiser effect" is likely similar—something that sounded good at the moment, totally detached from any coherent meaning.

In happier news

2008-02-24T16:09:00.002-05:00

I started emailing back and forth with Chris Bathgate's uncle randomly on Metafilter (he knows the GLMS guys too), and he sent me this article.

Money quote that simultaneously illuminates why I like Brandon Zwagerman and why I like to make fun of him: "'I think his power lies in the synthesis of his haunting, vaguely accented vocals and his talent for writing songs that more often than not hit that bulls-eye in your chest called your humanity,' Zwagerman said."

Dude, fucking move your fucking car!

2008-02-24T15:59:00.001-05:00

"And you know this....how? Ugh. Your answer to the OP was judgemental, dismissive, and totally out of line and you really ought to just apologize for it and move on, instead of trying to justify it. Period." from Iconomy.

This morning, we woke to find that some jackass had parked us in. While we were wrangling with tow companies (our usual one was having some sort of weird phone problems), the guy finally rolled out (one of our neighbors managed to wake him up, when my girlfriend's door pounding hadn't had an effect). This chubby, pale white dude, looking like a boiled potato in a tracksuit. Instead of just apologizing and moving his goddamned car, the guy kept trying to argue that his cross-ways parking was a legitimate spot and, you know, whatever, man. I just kinda went off from my balcony, yelling at him in this stream of profanity "Move your fucking car! Don't fucking argue with me, just move your fucking car! What the fuck are you doing, standing there like a fucking retard? Why the fuck aren't you moving your fucking car? Move your fucking car!" We'd been trying to leave, to go grocery shopping, for over an hour and the guy just had this vacant, open-mouthed stare while he's standing there with his door open, unable to process what the hell was going on.

And it was the same car that we've had towed previously for parking in that same exact fucking spot, man. So I've been keyed up all fucking morning, and I heartily endorse the idea of drinking. I think I'm gonna get drunk and go to the movies.

I even had to apologize to the poor woman from the police that I was on the phone with when the guy came out. Sheesh, man.

Atlas Sound!

2008-02-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

Atlas Sound—Let The Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel” (Kranky, 2008)

There is something to be said for being too nice to pull off ambition. For “Let the Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel,” that’s mostly a good thing—the title is a good glimpse of the type of silliness Deerhunter lead singer Bradford James Cox can veer into, especially with no band to hold back his whimsies. But that Cox has such a good head for arrangements and records such a pretty album that his straining doesn’t undo the core.

His album opener is built around a child telling “A Ghost Story” and the slight narrative becomes a warm, reverberating fable. In the hands of a band like The Books, the sample would have likely been a sparse and morose, but Cox ends up treating the kid with surprising tenderness.

Likewise, reading his interview with Pitchfork makes the songs less interesting, not more. The themes behind are usually moments of poetic suffering, but little of that comes through—“Winter Vacation” is easier to enjoy if you just accept it as a Sigur Ros rip-off; “Cold as Ice” is a jaunty David Byrne loop rolling along with Cox’s endlessly washed voice, and he could just as likely be singing about his favorite Foreigner songs as some adolescent romantic humiliation.

Still, all the songs are enveloping, all reward headphones or good speakers, and all follow the inexorable logic of dance music, succeeding through emotional tones rather than concept. That may be best shown on “Scraping Past,” where Cox works from the same aesthetic that Matthew Dear does, using the title as a looped wash over a plucky glitch backbeat and a simple two-note bassline. Instead of developing the melodies, he mixes them to develop the song, which gives the song a simple propulsiveness that might have otherwise spiraled into twee jetties.

If “Let the Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel” had achieved the depth that Cox seemed to want, the album would have been a slog. Thank God Cox realized the shallow pleasure of listening to music, and made a good album rather than a “great” one.

America's next what the fuck, TV?

2008-02-20T23:42:00.002-05:00

New cycle of America's Next Top Mongol!

Kim's, like, considered totally dumb or something, but she's really just deaf.

And OMG, PUNK ROCK CHICK IS GIVIN' 'EM HER BACK! SHE'S A FUCKING NIHILIST, MAN, AND YOU'RE JUST GONNA DEAL WITH IT!

I love this show. It is the number one assault on reality in America, the sort of shit that Warren Ellis only fucking dreams about. There is nothing that isn't rendered in the most explosive, expressionistic way possible.

And I love the beats behind it, this unceasing emotional narrative that's propulsive like the score to a musical. That may be the best comparison—the reality show as '50s musical.

But oh shit, they're gettin' thirsty over breastmilk what the fuck?