EVERYONE'S ACCUSING ME

I'm a fan of Continuum's 33 1/3 series. These are bite-sized books each dedicated to a single album, and some are quite insightful and entertaining.

However, others feel like they're fighting a bit too hard for a tenure track.

To wit, I just finished reading the entry on the Ramones' debut album, and commenting on the “second verse, same as the first” refrain in Judy is a Punk, the author notes:

"Although too much could be made of the affinities between these self-reflexive lines and experiments in metafiction-- fiction that breaks the frame and refers to the fact that it is fiction-- it's clear that the songs self-aware qualities were products of the same cultural trends that made possible the experimental, frame-breaking novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Hubert Selby, Charles Bukowski, William Gaddis, and others.”

Um, yeah. Either that, or it is a direct quote from one of the biggest hits by British Invasion popsters Herman's Hermits: I'm Henry the VIII, I Am:





Just my opinion you understand, but I think it's important for someone writing a book on the Ramones to know their Herman's Hermits at least as well as they know their Horkheimer and Adorno...

THERE'S NO REASON TO GRIEVE

Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Sold out. Fuck.

That was the sound from a few days ago of not getting tickets to either of two September Jeff Mangum shows in Baltimore.

However, my disappointment turned fairly quickly, and I found it heartening that there is such apparent enthusiasm for these shows.

It says to me that there are a good number of people out there in the mid-Atlantic states for whom Neutral Milk Hotel (and probably more to the point, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) remains meaningful.

And when you get right down to it, a world in which In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is meaningful is a pretty good world.

So I'll recast my initial reaction in retrospect:

Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Refresh. Click. Sold out. Fantastic.

Enjoy the show, friends!

LOVE AND SPECIAL THINGS

It's been a long time since I've written a song. This one pestered me the other night until I got out of bed and took 10 minutes to type out the words...

DECORATIVE MONEY

What's wrong with us?
Just decorative money.

That's all it was,
Just decorative money.


The wallpaper
Is decorative money.

We've got albums of it...
Fucking decorative money.


It's in my sinuses--
Decorative money.

I can't sing because
Of decorative money.


I shine my shoes
With decorative money.

I stand accused--
Decorative money.


What a lot of misery
The junkman comes to visit me
He brings me bags of credit
And he brings me sacks of cash.

My interest compounds dai-lily
I bank this month's fidelity
And all the shit you're selling me
Is decorative money.

And then I waltz away with it...

VERB AND REVERB

What's new with me beyond Tune-Yards?

Wait, sorry.

wHaT's NeW wItH mE bEyOnD tUnE-YaRdS?

Sweet of you to ask...

I like Tomboy well enough, but my mind starts to drift by around track 5. So, like Person Pitch, only less so (or more so, maybe).

I really like Moondance, but I've never met anyone I really like who really likes Moondance. Am I a self-hating Van man?

I decided long ago that my favorite coin ever is the 1908-1929 US half eagle. Nothing even comes close.

Hurry up with the 64GB iPhone, Apple. I'm tired of having to decide which albums/apps to sideline whenever I load up something new.

There's a good chance I'll never play the live set that came free with my copy of Tomboy. Apologies, Panda Bear.

I impulse bought the new Fleet Foxes a couple of weeks ago at Nordstrom while I was paying for a Chicago Cubs t-shirt. I'm not a Cubs fan, but I like their shirts. Not really a Fleet Foxes fan either-- haven't even unsealed the CD yet...

I scoffed when I saw that iTunes was going to be offering the Beatles Anthology set for $80. That's a lot of money for a lot of chaff. But then I saw that they're also going to sell something called Anthology Highlights for $13-- that's got potential.

I don't get Death Cab for Cutie. Never have.

Likewise The Shins.

And finally, this, from the Sept 1966 issue of Mad (which, yes, I was reading last weekend):

WH OK ILL

The new tUnE-yArDs scratches much the same itch as Bitte Orca by the Dirty Projectors except with longer fingernails and sometimes it hurts and then she sneaks up under your armpits and you giggle because it tickles but you still want her to stop just like you wanted her to stop when she was scratching you until it bled. But then you have to admit, the itch is pretty much gone...

DEATH OR GLORY

When I see a stadium full of people chanting "U-S-A!" in celebration of someone's death, I feel terribly out of step with you, America...

BEEN TOO LONG I'M GLAD TO BE BACK

So, uh, what have you been up to lately?

I confess I needed to take a bit of a breather after the events of March/April.

One thing that definitely helped was the Danielson show a couple of weekends ago at Red Palace in DC.

I'm an atheist with a devout Buddhist for a wife, so I wrestle with my attraction to Danielson. Their lyrics trade in Christian tropes that I'm familiar with from my childhood days in the Episcopal church.

But I don't think it's the message that resonates so much as the means.

The only part of church that I had any use for as a kid was the singing. I was literally a choirboy until my voice changed, and I always relished the spirit of raising voices together.

Red Palace was small, holding maybe 50-75 people in the performance space, and Danielson raised their voices for sure. The energy was unrelentingly positive but hardly saccharine, and they were an anodyne for what ailed me.

I queued up after the show to say hello to the band and thank them for the music, but the line was moving slowly and midnight was fast approaching, so I broke formation and left the club.

So let me say it here and now: Thanks Danielson, for a wonderful show!

AFTERSHOCKS

1.

The ground shook four or five times a day.

The circular fluorescent light above the kitchen table would begin to judder and sway, and then the floor would pitch gently for about half a minute.

"How big was that one?"

Suddenly, Lana and Sebastian trusted in me as a seismologist.

"That was a 3."

They were pretty much all 3s.

Oh, I might have thrown in a couple of 4s here and there, just for the sake of my credibility. But mostly they were 3s...

We were in Japan for the funeral of my father-in-law, who had passed away on March 17.

2.

My own father died when I was 12.

I don't recall the last time that I saw him. One day in the spring he left for the hospital, and he just never came back.

I didn't visit him while he was in the hospital. He was in an advanced cirrhotic state, and I suppose my family thought it was better if I didn't see him like that. Not sure who made that choice. Maybe he did.

I didn't attend the funeral, either. It was held in late May, and I ended that school year with perfect attendance.

3.

We arrived at the apartment, and I pulled off my sneakers. We were all tired from the flight, and the kids and I were ready to crash in the tatami room.

As we made our way down the short hallway to the room, something caught the corner of my eye. It was my father-in-law's body, which was laid out in the tatami room under a thick blue and white futon. His face was covered by a handkerchief.

Taeko led us into the room, and she kneeled down to remove the covering from his face. I felt myself retreating.

We started to discuss sleeping arrangements for the night, and I was troubled by the idea of spending the night in the small apartment with the body.

“Maybe the kids can sleep at your brothers. I can go with them.”

But I didn't press the issue.

And as the evening went on, I began to get more comfortable. I realized that my father-in-law was giving me a gift.

It was the gift of learning how to say goodbye.

4.

The next day, the mortician came to the house and prepared the body to be moved. He brought a simple white casket made of pressed wood, with hinged flaps that opened to expose my father-in-law's face. When the body was placed in the casket, it was covered from the neck down by a board that was designed to look like a suit. Which is a very practical vestment for a cremation...

My family chanted over the casket for a few minutes, and then the mortician and his assistant carried the box outside and lifted it into a Toyota Crown hearse. We all faced the car and bowed as it pulled away, and we said thank you to my father-in-law.

“Arigato, ojichan.”

5.

The wake was a simple and moving ceremony.

The family sat at the front of the room, and two-by-two we stood up to face the mourners. Taeko and I went together-- we bowed to thank everyone for coming, then turned and faced my father-in-law at the front of the hall. There were two small boxes on a table, and each box contained a pile of ground incense on one side and a burning silver ember on the other. We grabbed a pinch of incense, lifted it to our foreheads, and then placed it on the ember.

We repeated this rite three times, and then said a quick, silent prayer. Lana later told me that I “did a good job pretending to be Buddhist”...

When we had finished that segment, the mourners began to come up in twos and threes to another table that contained the same type of incense boxes. We bowed to each group from our chairs, and they went on to perform the same basic ritual that we had performed earlier. Their prayers completed, we bowed to them again.

It all felt so much like a funeral that I wondered what the next day would bring.

6.

The initial part of the funeral was indeed very much like the wake. But when the prayers and chanting were over, three or four employees of the funeral home began to break down the area surrounding my father-in-law's casket. Then they placed a couple of metal stands in the center of the room, about 5 feet apart. They moved the casket onto these stands, and slid off the lid.

We gathered around my father-in-law, and the mortician brought in a plate of succulent green sprigs. We each grabbed a small handful and placed them in the casket. This was followed by multiple trays of flowers, which we spread around as well. By the time we were finished, the interior of the casket was dazzlingly bright, and exuded a sweet, floral perfume.

The casket was covered again, and I joined my nephews and some of Taeko's cousins as we carried it out of the hall and placed it on a large gurney. A procession of mourners followed the gurney to the crematorium, where the casket was wheeled into an oven. The steel doors of the oven were then sealed shut, and we heard the muted whoosh of fire.

7.

We were whisked to a long, narrow room for lunch.

Bento boxes with colorful block letters for the kids: A is for Apple, B is for Banana, and the like. Larger blue sets decorated with white flowers for the adults.

Taeko reached into her bag and handed me an onion bagel sealed in a Ziploc.

8.

After about an hour, the door opened, and we were led out, back to the crematorium. We gathered in an anteroom while Taeko, her mother, and her brother went into a large reception area. The kids and I craned our necks and looked around corners in an effort to see what they were doing.

One of the assistants came around with a bucket containing large chopsticks-- they were the size of drumsticks, and the tips were darkened with ash. We were each encouraged to take two. I rolled them around in my hand, and tried to grip them like regular chopsticks. But they were too big for that.

When we entered the reception hall, we found the burnt remains of the casket, intermingled with my father-in-law's ashes and his deep white bones. Working in pairs, we chose a bone from the skeletal array and picked it up with our chopsticks. If my sketchy knowledge of human anatomy is correct, my partner and I selected his right ulna.

We all placed the bones in a small white box.

9.

It was a beautiful ritual.

If you had asked me in the cold light of a previous day how I might have felt about such an experience, I can't honestly say I would have embraced it. I might have been concerned about how it would affect the kids. I might have been concerned about how it would affect me.

But in the moment, I felt connected to something real and profound. It felt fittingly similar to the experience of witnessing Lana's birth.

10.

I sat in the passenger's seat on the drive home, with the box of my father-in-law's bones warming my lap.

Arigato, ojichan.

11.

We did not feel a single aftershock during our last two days in Japan.

DAUGHTERS WILL TUNE YOU

Rest in peace, Mitsuo Kato.

MIND-CRAZED BANJO

So, Titus Andronicus and The Pogues...

brain coral and I were able to score our usual slots in the balcony, cozied up next to the rail. Nice to have something to lean on as the years go by...

I think we were both more excited to see Titus, and they did not disappoint.

They charged right into A More Perfect Union although the floor was only half full, and their energy never flagged. (They begged the indulgence of a slow moment once, to play No Future Part Three, which of course explodes at about the two-minute mark.)

They were pogo-worthy, although the guitarist seemed to think she was in a Dance Workout with Barbie VHS.

The Pogues were fairly predictable, which is not meant as a criticism. Circumstances pretty much dictate that they need to stay on script.

They did play a couple of songs that I have not heard them attempt previously on these 21st Century resurrection tours. Boat Train from Peace and Love sank in the docks-- Shane started on the second verse, which threw the band off for the remainder.

They fared better on London Girl from Poguetry in Motion, its somewhat tricky meter notwithstanding.

And of course they came on stage to Straight to Hell. Which reminded me that Joe Strummer is still dead.

But then the show kind of reminded me that he is not...

BUT THE AD

So I hear that Beavis & Butthead are coming back.

I always get a little nervous when icons from a bygone era try to stride into a new age. Not that it can’t be done—it’s just tricky is all.

So much of the value of Beavis & Butthead rested in their genius as cultural meta-critics, particularly music/video critics.

(I mean, have you ever seen the DVD releases of the old shows, which excise all of the interstitial video segments? It's like pouring out a box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries and getting nothing but a bowl of Crunch.)

But of course, these are different times. The music business has lost much of the gravitational pull that it had back in the early to mid ‘90s, and music videos are now just means for the Gagas and Kanyes of the world to indulge their own cultural nostalgia.

I’m sure there are plans afoot to update the perspective. Maybe the boys will focus on viral videos or reality TV. Both of which, yeah, are kind of over.

However, I do have faith in Mike Judge and his ability to summon the Swiftian anger these times deserve (see Idiocracy), so I’ll give their return a long, hard look.

Huh huh uh huh. He said “long, hard”….

YOUR COVER'S BLOWN

Yesterday for sport I was compiling a list of all my iTunes album art images that don't match the actual recordings to which they're attached.

Many of the missteps are pretty benign: a stock image of Bjork instead of the Debut cover, or the Still Cruisin' cover in place of Pet Sounds.

However, some of the combinations are just weird and random and awesome. Here's a list of my top 5 favorites.

5. John Cale, The Island Years (Disc 2)



John Tracy's shit is mellow. “Slow down,” he says, as he reclines against his guitar case picking out a tune. “Slow down,” says his laid-back black and white tropical shirt. “Slow down,” he whispers through his porn-star stache. John Tracy's shit is super mellow.

4. Various Artists, Like, Omigod! The 80s Pop Culture Box (Totally)



It's got all your 80s favs: Tainted Love, Let's Go to Bed, Too Shy, Nocturne #2 in E flat Major Op 9,2...

3. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem



Um, WTF Soundsystem?

2. The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses



My first guess would have been that Stones Throe were a 90s metal band, what with the intentional misspelling and the implied umlaut. The shot of the neo-Goth Brooklyn Bridge behind sheets of rain lends that notion further support. Turns out they're some sort of blues combo...

1. Marvin Gaye, What's Going On



Because nothing says soul like Tiffany, Lisa, Jake, and Spencer, the Finalists of Star Search...

HE'S GOT A FORD CORTINA

There's something to be said for the first day of the year that you can roll the car windows down halfway and play Janie Jones at top volume.

You're a tease February, but I wouldn't have it any other way...

COOLER WEATHER IT'S NOT COOL TO SMILE

Random classic-rock thoughts for a Friday.

After the Gold Rush came up in a mix on my iPhone yesterday, as a blue Toyota Echo with the words “The Merry Maids” printed in pink block letters on the passenger door pulled up next to me at a light. And if a blue Toyota Echo with the words “The Merry Maids” printed in pink block letters on the passenger door could sing, surely it would sing After the Gold Rush...

I have very little use for live versions of songs in general, but Hang On To Yourself from the Ziggy soundtrack is a step up from the studio version. The less said about Arnold Corns, the better...

Moonlight Feels Right by Starbuck is noxious post-hippie piffle, but the marimba solo on the bridge is kickass...

Top 2 Songs That Contain Video-Game Sound Effects
1. Ivan Meets GI Joe, The Clash (Space Invaders)
2. The Logical Song, Supertramp (Mattel handheld electronic football)

Question of the week, from Lana: “Daddy, why does he have $26 in his hand?”

I've been infecting people with Popcorn by Hot Butter all week-- it's your turn now:

I DREAM OF GENIUS

OK, Apple, you decided to call it Genius. Not me.

If you’d have gone with something less presumptuous (like say “iMix” or “24 Algorithmically Related Songs in the Same Genre as the Song You’re Playing Currently”), then we would not be where we find ourselves today.

I’d keep the gloves on, and simply thank you for the added functionality.

But no. You had to go and call it Genius.

And so now I have to gripe.

My first complaint is likely not even Apple’s fault. But it is very annoying that Beatles’ songs cannot be incorporated into Genius mixes.

This is probably some fine-print directive from McCartney/Starkey/Estate of Lennon/Estate of Harrison.

Can’t have the unwashed masses curating and recontextualizing the sacred texts…

Well let it go, gang. You cannot fight this tide.

Secondly, I’m concerned with the tendency to beat certain tracks into submission, like an old FM radio DJ. I have 8,294 songs loaded up on iTunes, but I swear that one of the following titles shows up on every Genius mix I make:

Age of Consent, New Order
Teen-Age Riot, Sonic Youth
Just Like Honey, JAMC
Milk Man, Deerhoof
Papercuts, Broadcast

Now I understand that these songs are probably a pretty accurate genetic mapping of my library, but I would encourage the Genius to learn that there are indeed other songs that share similar strands of DNA.

Finally, trying to figure out why the Genius can find 24 songs related to The Emergency Kisses, but cannot find “enough related songs to create a Playlist” for Come and Play in the Milky Night is the kind of thing that keeps me up all hours…

IN CONCERT

I have tickets for the Titus Andronicus/Pogues show in March, and I just bought a couple for Danielson in April.

But so help me, if Jeff Mangum comes within two states of the District in the fall, I might just lose my mind...

LINES FORM ON MY FACE AND HANDS

This past Sunday was our wedding anniversary. I'll let Alice tell you how many years:



With all sorts of freaky, glammy love, Taeko...

BROADCAST

Last night I was in a Palo Alto hotel room. I was bleary eyed, just checking e-mail and the internet before I went to bed. I came across rumors that Trish from Broadcast was seriously ill, and at first it just seemed like cruel and pointless misinformation.

However, as time wore on, it became clear that the rumors were true. Then I woke up this morning, my fourth day away from home, and saw confirmation that Trish had passed.

Part of me hoped I would get back home to my own couch, flip open my laptop, and find no trace of this information. All the mournful threads would be gone, and in their place would be typically enigmatic plans for the future. New albums, new collaborations, new art...

But being home has not made this any less real. Trish is dead.

I am sad beyond measure, and my thoughts are with her family and friends.

Thank you for the music, Trish...

CORPOREAL

Dammit.

Get well soon, Trish!

YOU'RE GOING HOME

If you're a child of the '70s and can claim to be untouched completely by Baker Street, well then you're a liar or something worse.

RIP, Gerry Rafferty...