12.12.14

CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.

the bear went over the mountain (book). william kotzwinkle, national magazine award winner and author of the novelization of E.T., was recommended to me by a lovely british writer and frank zappa enthusiast i met in turkey. i wish i could tell that writer (who followed up via twitter to see if i read the book as promised) i found kotzwinkle as witty as he does, but he...reminds me of thomas pynchon at his slapstickiest? the bear went over the mountain is intentionally ridiculous—it's about a bear who finds fame and fortune in the '90s publishing world posing as the author of a novel he finds in a suitcase under a tree in maine—but the sometimes-inspired absurdity is studded with weird little laddish details i found alienating. is it fair to wonder if a bear posing as a bestselling human author would fixate on women in thongs? in semi-related news, i will probably be alone in hating paul thomas anderson's film version of pynchon's inherent vice.

hammam al ándalus madrid (public baths). the beauty editors on my turkey trip came back raving about the scrubbings they'd received at a hammam near the hippodrome in istanbul; i'd opted to visit sultan ahmed's mosque instead, so i could but imagine what mysterious cleansing rituals went down in the baths beneath the city. madrid's restored arabic baths were in a cistern just a few blocks from our little apartment on the plaza mayor; alors, they seemed like the perfect prelude to our mid-week football match. i had the kessa, a scrub on heated stone with a textured cloth and foam from red grape soap, and joe had a massage; for the rest of our ninety minutes under the street, i swam from room to room glowering and pretending to be a man-eating carp. there were maybe...ten other people in the facility with us for the session? the mint tea flowed freely, the waters smelled fantastic, and i hardly had to get naked at all. this bath ritual stuff is A-OK.

pocatello (play). years after MDF pointed me at the whale, the missus and i are still samuel d. hunter superfans. we saw the few this spring, and i finally caved and got us kiddie-pool memberships to playwrights horizons so that we could book fancy early seats for pocatello this fall. i'm glad we did; t.r. knight is wonderful as eddie, the soft-spoken manager of a dying olive garden in the middle of nowhere. the story that surrounds him isn't especially exciting, but i'm not sure that it needs to be; like the whale, this is a play with a sinkhole of anguish at its center. i'm man enough to admit that i felt nearly as much for the crappy old olive garden as i did for eddie; that's where we went for Special Occasions when i was a kid, and my heart broke a little every time someone at college sneered at it (we had dinner there when i got accepted to college, assholes).

the secret history (book). a donna tartt book i can sort of get behind, internets! the secret history's formal whydunnit structure (the main characters commit murder in the prologue, and the majority of the book flashes back to what led them to it; tartt likens her plot to a classical tragedy in which the details, not the well-known denouement, provide the tension) suits the material and the narrator, though i'd have liked to hear from him at a more advanced age (he's a twenty-eight-year-old, roughly tartt's age when she published the book, remembering his college years). like the goldfinch, the secret history is a page-turner with weird flaws (would a narrator who lays down ancient greek without providing its equivalent in english for the reader also refer to "charles baudelaire" by his first and last name?), but there's more at stake here; i appreciate that, even though i went on to have gory, shouty dreams as a result.

slowdive @ terminal 5 (concert). i risked losing out on my stay at a cappadocian cave hotel to rush home for slowdive's only NYC show—probably my sexiest saturday night ever, there, rolling straight from istanbul to a slowdive concert—and am ever so glad i did; this was my equivalent of the soul-bending my bloody valentine reunion shows at roseland ballroom in 2008. like MBV, slowdive blossoms live; unlike any other band i've seen, they actually make terminal 5 (a cavernous concrete box) sound good. rachel goswell's venusian choirgirl voice is as pure now as it was when my friends and i wore flannel boxer shorts in mixed company; i'd always assumed her vocals were forced and looped like tulips on a turntable, but that's all rachel, internets. neil halstead still sounds like a thick pair of socks, but when one is in new york rather than san francisco (looking at you, slim's) and neil has a kick-ass band at his back, that's actually a fine thing. i didn't mean to cry when they played "blue skied an' clear," but it couldn't be helped; that performance was one of the loveliest things i've ever experienced. fuck yeah, slowdive.

suzanne vega @ joe's pub (concert). erin agreed to be my date for the suzanne vega show last month, which was good of her; she also agreed to eat at korilla beforehand, which was downright heroic of her (i'm willing to believe their korean burritos are great served from a truck, but they were weirdly joyless eats in a brick-and-mortar setting). like slowdive's rachel goswell, la vega seems to have been spending time in a hyperbaric chamber; i'd go so far as to say her voice made my ears feel minty. her pretty young backup singer turned out to be her daughter, ruby froom (the "beautiful child" who gave soul coughing's ruby vroom its name); if i may echo my boyfriend anthony lane in his babadook review, let a law be passed, requiring all comeback tours to be made by female singers who harmonize with their daughters. it happens that there are in fact bad-ish seats in joe's pub, as we were squished with another pair of ladies at a two-top, but the sazeracs were plausible and suzanne vega had a top hat, so i can hardly complain.


imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 would a bear be as interested in posing as a bestselling author today as william kotzwinkle posited he would have been in 1996?
02 does john irving find his novels in suitcases beneath trees?
03 have you ever been to public baths? did you feel like a carp?
04 if you've read both the secret history and the goldfinch, which did you prefer?
05 what ranks as your sexiest saturday night ever?
06 how do you feel about korean burritos?

10.24.12

culture blotter {cat power @ hammerstein, 10.23.12}



what we talk about when we talk about cat power (the singer/songwriter chan marshall) depends, even more than most conversations do, on how we got in, on where we're sitting, and on who's beside us. her substance abuse and crippling social anxiety are better known than her music in some circles, and it's widely understood in the indie community that cat power shows can be transcendent, or train wrecks, or both. over at the awl, dave bry wrote that he'd be skipping her show here in new york city after hearing reports that she's revisiting the bad old days:

[I]t worried me to read, in August, in Amanda Petrusich's profile at Pitchfork, that Cat Power was drinking tequila and whiskey. Steve Kandell's piece in Spin was more explicit: she was wasted. It worried me more to learn, late last month, that she'd been hospitalized in Miami for undisclosed medical reasons.

Her concerts have been falling apart again, too. Two weeks ago, the Miami New Times' David Von Bader described a show at Grand Central Miami:

With a golden beam of light shrouding her silhouette, the songstress rallied and got through the song, swaying and itching a bit in what could only be described as a mime's imaginary box, set in the corner of the stage.

On Monday, in Toronto, she was described as seeming "scattered and frail."

[...]

I don't think that she is feeling fine. Or, if she is, I don't think that she'll be feeling that way for very much longer. The connection between musical genius and drug and alcohol addiction will not be news to anybody, but this instance is striking me as particularly depressing. Here I am, enjoying one of my favorite artist's new music, celebrating its return to a level of brilliance previously achieved—quite possibly at the expense of that artist's well-being.

[...]

Cat Power is playing at Hammerstein Ballroom tonight. Tickets are still available. Maybe it'll be great. I hope it is. Let me know.

when i was in college, i lost my youthful invulnerability all at once. at one moment i was unaware of the sea of faces impossibly far below me, and at the next i was a tightrope walker without her legs. i eventually relearned how to be in public without crumpling - thank god for tolerant professors and a strong support network - but on some nights the anxiety still echoes down there, and the feeling that i could fall forever is one i won't forget. i've wanted to hear cat power's music live for a decade: her version of "satisfaction" is one of the cleverest covers i've ever heard, and her own songs feel like lullabies from a lost moon. i heard the new album when we were in iceland, and it was fucking great. i've also wanted to bear witness to her recovery, as if seeing her in her spotlight could distance me from my own darkness.

it doesn't work that way, of course. i can follow reports that chan underwent a horrible breakup just as she finished her album, or paddle around in her unauthorized biography (an interesting if not unbiased read) and play amateur psychiatrist, but her darkness is as foreign to me as mine would be to her. she halted one song last night, saying that it didn't sound right; we cheered loudly anyway, she and the band began the next song without incident, and we all kept going. "superhero," she said, pointing to a face in the crowd. "superhero," pointing to another. "superhero," pointing at herself. that is my reaction to cat power: i keep going.

my favorite song from sun, a song she didn't halt, is "nothin' but time;" give it a listen, if you have a moment. it's the first track of the mix tape i'm making for my best friend's daughter.

04.13.12 {pulp @ radio city music hall}



i have an amateur video of jarvis cocker slinking up the wall during "this is hardcore" on tuesday night, but it feels dirtier to keep it to myself for a bit before releasing it into the wild. pulp was always good for that.

11.06.11

101 in 1001 {II}: 080 see a show at joe's pub [completed 10.28.11]



how did it take me eight years to get to a show at joe's pub? i'm tempted to call it our local equivalent of bimbo's 365 club in san francisco (an easy walk from home, a genteel space, and a reasonably-priced night out), but it's actually much better than that; it's utterly un-grotty (i'm looking at you, village vanguard), every seat is a good one (you could work on that, bimbo's), and my front-row ticket to tanya donelly and friends - purchased four days before the show - was dirt cheap. it's been almost a decade since i last saw tanya, who's honey-throated and gorgeous as ever; her motley band (rick moody, the magnetic fields' claudia gonson and sam davol, one ring zero's michael hearst, the breeders' carrie bradley, and hannah marcus) was capable and amiable, the beer was reasonably-priced and just exotic enough, and the air on the walk home was crisp and smoky. rocktober took a deep, sweeping bow and left the stage.

10.06.11: culture blotter {portishead @ hammerstein}



rocktober rolled on yesterday evening with a portishead show at hammerstein ballroom, site of a memorable david bowie spotting at a pixies concert a few years ago.* i expected a fairly sexy show, as dummy was considered one of the greatest hookup albums of its day (but for "roads," a song which makes one want to cover one's genitals with duct tape). what i experienced was more of a violation: hammerstein's ultra-motivated security team took searches to a new level of weird (i saw the bag-searcher ahead of me checking a gal's prescription pill bottle against her driver's license), the woo!-drunk guy next to me kept lurching over and then clutching whichever part of me he'd just jostled as he turned to apologize, with 80-proof plosives, for doing so, and the audience decided en masse to numb themselves prior to "roads" by smoking all of the pot in the world (it is all gone now! all of it, smoked at hammerstein) during the encore. that said, beth gibbons is still an icicle in your ear: her voice was crystalline and wondrous for numbers like "wandering star" and "glory box," and it humanized newer, kerwhompity sternum-rattlers like "machine gun." rocktober's kinky secret: its violations aren't universally unpleasant.

*torn between staying for the encore and ducking out to follow bowie when he dematerialized from the mezzanine, i decided to stay put; i then ended up with tickets for another pixies show on a subsequent evening, and they played the same damn encore. takeaway: always follow bowie.

10.05.11: culture blotter {the psychedelic furs @ irving plaza}



you know you have the right husband when he relieves you of "pretty-in-pink"-recording duties so you can molly ringwald all over the concert hall in a manner you've been dreaming of since you were eight. richard butler sounds as amazing now as he did when i was in third grade; it's for the best that we didn't have the camera out when the band launched into "heartbreak beat," for i lost my shit. welcome back, rocktober.

07.13.11: {cibo matto @ brooklyn bowl}



RULE 5
CONCERTS
In Bowling Alleys
1. At least sixty seconds of "Know Your Chicken" shall be recorded for beloved roommates.
2. One shall jump up and down and up and down.

{setlist, jumping here}

10.28.10: canada, part II {the black and white}



















{phoenix @ madison square garden;* farine five roses on the lachine canal; habitat 67; crane, vieux port; HQ, société canadienne d'opérette, rue saint-denis; graffiti, vieux port}

*while madison square garden is hardly in canada, the phoenix show was mere hours before our train left penn station; i consider it part of the trip. also all francophones look alike.

09.21.10: culture blotter {pavement @ williamsburg waterfront}



joe chose excellence and joined me for the pavement show! a solid choice it was, i think; unlike the superfans who snagged and lost their tickets to the summerstage shows last year, he had to wait but a day to walk across the williamsburg bridge for malkmus & co's first new york show since 1999. it must be said that the venue is kind of awful; i was expecting something like the prospect park bandshell with a hot view of the east river and manhattan, but the stage faced away from the shore and backed against the mccondos that have mushroomed up there in the last few years...so the whole thing felt a bit like a secret rave thrown by realtors. also, no lawn! but pavement were in fine form; i enjoyed the show (and the pre-show burgers and beer and backgammon) so much that i actually traveled the hipster superhighway to get up to the stage and take pictures. well done, steve and the gang.

guy: YOU. what’s your go-to song tonight.
LMO: elevate me later.
guy: ooooh, off the beaten path. i’ll pump my fist in the air for you if i hear it. i bet they’ll play it, i’ve been checking the setlists.
LMO: ...though I’d give my right eye to hear jo jo's jacket.
guy: if you wanted to hear solo stuff, you should have gone to see him in march! i did.
LMO: well, then you win.
guy: no, it’s not a contest!
LMO: oh yes it is.
guy: okay, it is.

07.28.10

101 in 1001 {II}: 097 attend an event at the prospect park bandshell [completed 07.27.10]



bam. (not to be confused with bam.) the national with beach house (and wabes, and swedish fish, and a big bag of cherries).

06.04.10: one marriage, two value systems


From: Lauren
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2010 12:33 PM
To: Joe
Subject: So

I bought a Pavement ticket. If you choose excellence, you know where to find me.

From: Joe
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2010 4:11 PM
To: Lauren
Subject: RE: So

I hope you have a wonderful time! Perhaps that evening I will be at home listening to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, enjoying air conditioning and a cold, reasonably-priced beer.

04.26.10



celebrities v. giant inflatable rats: big love edition

[at the hot chip show, terminal 5, friday*]

lau: [whips out cell phone]
joe: you are not tweeting about seeing her.
lau: but the sev is the quintessential new york sighting!
joe: all you have is your pride.
lau: [texts amanda instead]

rats: 4.5
star: 15

in other news of the fabulous, we joined amanda and peonies-and-boy (finally past the horrible ash cloud and with us in the states, hooray!) to raise a glass to birthday-meg in brooklyn last night. the rain spattering the restaurant's tented roof sounded like applause; it was lovely.

*that angry review was for the thursday show; i think that one sold out before we were born, as the xx opened for them. alas, the xx were in baltimore on friday; we'll cross paths some other time, for they are boss.

06.11.09

101 in 1001 {II}: 008 see elvis costello in concert [completed 06.10.09]



my friend douglas's pitchfork review of elvis costello's latest album, secret, profane & sugarcane, had me a bit worried before last night's show: he argues that the sugarcanes, the bluegrass ringers who replace the attractions (elvis's rock band), have a hard time keeping up. though i did long for the occasional keyboard squeal, i found that i liked the net effect of this band: since i hadn't yet heard the new stuff, i appreciated the taste of EC's vocals (and the lyrics, bless that man and his clever, clever lyrics) without a lot of garnish. moreover, the show's rootsy underpinnings led to some really fantastic combinations for older and cover material - i loved his interpretation of "femme fatale,"* which he called "a folk song from these parts," and "blame it on cain" got even cooler with a little dobro and accordion sprinkled over the top. so when it was good, the show was very, very good, and when it was bad - oh, my. i wish i could forget hearing "every day i write the book" (a song that's always been a bit too proud of itself, so whatever) and "(the angels wanna wear my) red shoes" (one of my favorites, alas!); i'm sure it gets tiresome to play album versions of things night after night after night, but i can't forgive him for the drawn-out vocal flourishes he added to those songs. the "book" chorus blossomed like a rotten flower; he sang that thing for ten minutes. but! he spent plenty of time (he played for more than two and a half hours) with other, far finer things. i will forgive almost anything for a fiery "(what's so funny 'bout) peace, love and understanding" or an unadorned "alison," and i got both. hell of a guy, that elvis costello.

*props for covering a velvet underground song from the nico era, too. he could mimic lou reed in his sleep; hearing his take on big, teutonic ladyvocals was much more interesting.

03.26.09: inner-goth-is-levitating-with-morrissey-happiness haiku



"how soon is now?" live
at carnegie bloody hall
with a gong. the end.

10.03.08: culture blotter {echo & the bunnymen @ radio city music hall}



the 'salute to dinosaurs' portion of rocktober continued apace with last night's radio city, orchestra-backed performance of echo & the bunnymen's ocean rain, an album released when i was six. goofy glowing drinks aside, radio city's not a bad place to take in a show, and i quite liked getting to kick back in a seat like the old woman i am. i wasn't as excited about being in the third mezzanine: sure, i bought the cheapest seats, but i bought them a twelfth of a second after they went on sale. at the other end of the spectrum, due to some infernal algorithm i don't want to know about, ticketmaster failed to release a bunch of the seats near the stage until yesterday morning - and they sat empty all night. the night's lessons: cough up the extra $10 or $20 per seat when possible (as rocktober comes but once a year), and ticketmaster is still the devil.

the show began (on time!) with glasvegas, a bunch of adorable scottish feedback enthusiasts who gave us post-punk via the brill building. we heard a grand total of two of their songs, but they were both catchy (particularly the doo-wop "daddy's gone"), and i'm a sucker for self-effacing weegies. seriously: when the second depression becomes official and the ladymag goes under, i'm going to scotland to be a roadie. or to apprentice with timorous beasties. i haven't worked out the details yet, but glasgow is in there somewhere.

the main event was all over the place, mostly in a good way. rumors of ian mcculloch's ferocious egotism (he's said to have called ocean rain the greatest album of all time shortly after it was released) appear to be true: he's quite the strutter, and his many comments about how much he was enjoying himself started to seem like straight-up cues for applause. rumors of how his voice has given out seemed exaggerated, at least for the first few songs of the "greatest hits" set (about a dozen songs, played before ocean rain): "lips like sugar" was fabulous, and "rescue" was pretty great. "bring on the dancing horses," on the other hand, was a hot mess: the vocals had clearly been tweaked for ian's abbreviated range, and he sounded rough anyway. he sounded a lot like lou reed when i saw him in 1997, actually, which became ironic when the band launched into an horrific medley of "people are strange," "walk on the wild side," and "in the midnight hour" (?!). i think they were going for sinister, and joe said he liked the effect with "walk on the wild side," but as simon cowell would say, mac was like some ghastly singer in a hotel lobby. the ocean rain set, in turn, was unequivocally wonderful: hearing "silver" with the orchestra was thrilling, and "the killing moon" is devastating in any setting. sung by muppets; performed in semaphore; doesn't matter. it was the last song on our wedding playlist: wildly inappropriate, sure, but too awesome to omit. hearing it live gave me chills: take that something, my bloody valentine!

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 how goes your rocktober, internets? seen anyone zesty since last we spoke?

02 what's the worst cover you've ever heard?

03 what will you do when america collapses and we all have to wear barrels with suspenders? aside from wearing a barrel with suspenders, of course.

09.23.08: culture blotter {my bloody valentine @ roseland ballroom}

rocktober, the month or so in which joe and i do most of our concertgoing for the year, began not with a bang but a...something, at the first of my bloody valentine's two NYC shows at roseland ballroom last night. locals who caught their sunday show in the catskills warned that the complimentary ear plugs were a must-have rather than a suggestion ("you're gonna fucking need 'em to endure their noisy 20-odd minute climax"), and they weren't kidding: i actually needed one of the spare pairs i'd brought along, as the...something jiggled my first set right out of my ears and down to the grotty venue floor.

but i'm getting ahead of myself. my bloody valentine: a shoegazer band famous for using every pedal ever made and spending something like £250,000 (nearly bankrupting their record label) to create loveless (1991), their second album, which tops all sorts of critics' lists and sounds like seraphim snagged in a garbage disposal. they're genius if you're fond of a certain kind of brown noise and insufferable if you don't (poor jen had a rough time with my shoegazer phase when we lived in england; as a brooklynvegan commenter put it, "the only band that inspired more shitty bands than MBV, is Pavement." [sic]). i fall somewhere in the middle and vastly prefer a few of MBV's contemporaries (slowdive and ride); i turned london upside down to find the you made me realise EP back in the day, but loveless only joined my CD pile when The Man With 42 Blue Coats, my abrasive ex, made it my twentieth birthday present (right after we broke up, as i recall - very emo). joe discovered that copy and loves it (and is hipster-mean's polar opposite), so hey hey circle of life!

we squidged in our MBV-approved plugs and settled in for the main act at about ten last night, and as soon as the band kicked into "i only said"'s siren loops, joe lit up like a boardwalk carnival. it's a real pleasure to see the missus bliss out that way: having to wait for two hours as rude beer-fetchers knocked us across the floor was less than cool, but his holy shit that's kevin shields right there! face made up for it. i...don't have the best hearing anyway, and between the sonic assault (MBV show recaps - positive ones! - are full of superviolent descriptors, which is sort of weird when one isn't talking about metal) and the foam, i couldn't always tell which song i was hearing. i just barely heard the "thorn" chorus, but i'd known it was coming: i'd seen the set list for the previous show.

then, most of the way through "you made me realise" at the end of the set, came the something, a feedback apocalypse that's apparently closed all of this year's shows. it lasted roughly twelve minutes, came in at about 130 decibels (that is, above the threshold of pain and right around jet takeoff), and was loud enough to break up a kidney stone, as joe put it (as someone twittered, "my bloody valentine is shattering my bones"). forget feeling the crunch of the reverb in your sternum: this twisted around in my guts (i'd be willing to bet that a few of the people who left early went to throw up), got my skin buzzing, and made it hard to breathe. some people loved the effect and flung their arms out to absorb the waves, at least at first. me, i'm kind of shocked, strongly suggested ear plugs or no: sitting through the end of that show without them would have blown our eardrums. kids irish fortysomethings today!

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 is tinnitis a performer's fault or a fan's? should MBV be liable if someone went deaf last night?

02 loudest show you've ever seen? was it worth the ringing ears?

06.13.08

one of my favorite things about living in san francisco was our near-constant access to great shows. it was occasionally tricky to get tickets to see, say, belle and sebastian at the warfield,* but seeing le tigre at the great american music hall or tanya donelly at bimbo's was like rolling out of bed. with bimbo's shows, that was almost literal: we usually walked there and walked home. hooking it up in new york, on the other hand, you have to be prepared to cut someone. people will queue for an hour for free frozen yogurt in this town; imagine what they'll do to see vampire weekend at a small venue. i usually can't be bothered with jostling for tickets, but i have felt feisty this spring: we have four shows coming up! behold!

22 september: my bloody valentine at roseland ballroom. long ago when the earth was flat and the british pound was worth less than $20, we got tickets to see MBV in glasgow on july 2nd. joe is one of those guys who feels that loveless is one of the greatest albums of all time, and i can be a competitive little brat: i figured we'd be able to win any music geek throwdown with that show under our belts. oh, and glasgow is one of the finest cities on earth (high point of our honeymoon, hands down). then we found that airfare was going to be a thousand dollars apiece; then the roseland shows were announced and i got tickets for those. internets, do you know anyone who'd like to see a free show in scotland? seriously, the ticket agent is making it really difficult for me to resell. i'd rather just give the gift of shoegazer: drop me a line.

1 october: echo & the bunnymen at radio city. o maladjusted '80s marvelousness! i've loved these guys since i first heard "bring on the dancing horses" on a taped-from-TV** copy of pretty in pink. they're performing ocean rain with a full orchestra, and i don't care that ian mcculloch has started sounding like neil young instead of post-punk misanthropy incarnate. "the killing moon" live! with an orchestra! i miss wearing velvet all the time.

3 october: hot chip at terminal 5. "over and over" showed up on new york noise a few years ago and has been stuck in my head more or less ever since. i was disconcerted at first, but it's a marvelous song (and video), so i've adapted. i imagine there will be a lot of fancy, fancy hipsters at the hot chip show; OK with me, as long as they bathe.

29 november: jim gaffigan at town hall. crowded house came through town recently, and joe (who feels more strongly about neil finn than anyone i've ever met) decided we didn't need to get tickets because they were something like $50 apiece; now we're spending only a bit less than that to hear a man talk about hot pockets. i blame george, who mentioned gaffigan's sexy tour when we were heat-dazed en route to new jersey last saturday and had the collective IQ of a raisin. it'll be fun, i'm sure, but i...yeah. hot pockets.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 is free frozen yogurt better than vampire weekend?

02 what's the greatest album of all time?

03 did i go to wendy's twice yesterday?

*jacob and i met a girl at that show who later appeared in a dvd extra for season 3 of the L word.

**i think it was the first dubbed movie i ever saw; i didn't realize for years that jon cryer wasn't actually calling james spader slime.