robert nighthawk on maxwell street in chicago

usedta have this on vinyl. wish i still did.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

the current ish's "killer or filler" music column includes a review i penned of acoustic guitar virtuoso darrin kobetich's new ceedee songs for a muse meant.

o.c.

james williamson

proof positive, as if anymore were needed, that living well is the best revenge. from cnn money.

speaking of gigs i missed

here's black flag guitarist/mastermind greg ginn (and occasional visitor to the fort with his latter day bands jambang and the corrugators) joining early black flag singer ron "chavo" reyes at his 50th berfday gig, via arthur.

nervebreakers @ trees, 7.24.2010

here's what i missed by running the other night instead of going to deep ellum. one of my favorite bands on earth, and part of the reason why i'm in texas today (long story).

kotj

speaking of which...different take than the more famous one from beat club. starts out at the original tempo, with lotsa extemporaneous jamarama in the middle.

bobby seale

jay babcock int with the former black panther, chicago eight defendant, master barbecuer, and one time b-52 crew chief. from arthur.

pretty things '65

parachute

i've prolly posted these before, but i've been listening to this alb every day for a week, and now there's a 40th anniversary edition coming in september on 2cd and vinyl. you owe it to yourself.

7.25.2010, ftw

last night, was planning to go see yells at eels at the kessler, and feeling bummed that i'd miss the nervebreakers playing the hot klub reunion at trees. but when i was walking home from work, the temperature felt the most congenial it had since we've been back from new joisey, and i've been intending to run early in the morning but sleeping in instead, so i opted to forego the show in favor of an evening run, which included watching a beautiful texas sunset and proved to be just what the doctor ordered.

this morning, i ran to barnes & noble on university to get us a sunday nyt (since i didn't have to work until 2pm), but when i got there, b&n was closed, and they don't post their hours. feh. at least it got me out of this seat and onto the street. maybe home delivery would be worthwhile after all, though.

i've been re-reading clinton heylin's babylon's burning, which attempts to recount the entahr history of punk from television to nirvana over 600+ pages. couldn't go the distance, though. it isn't just that ancient scene politics is boring to read about. heylin's condescending about anything american, and i suppose it doesn't help that i could give a rat's ass about "post-punk." a drag, as i enjoyed his from the velvets to the voidoids real much.

much better: current issue of razorcake, which boasts a good billy bragg int and the first part of an in-depth feature on east l.a. punk originators thee undertakers. it'll take me the next six months to read all the record/book/zine reviews. also the new ugly things, which includes the unedited interviews jon savage conducted with ray davies for his 1984 kinks tome, the continuing master's apprentices saga, laurent bigot on the nervebreakers (although i still prefer my own int w/mike, barry, and bob from a decade or so ago), and the patto piece of the ollie halsall story. plus more reviews than you can shake a stick at.

i've been lazy as hell since we got back from new joisey. i have a new clean feed release to review, but i don't feel like writing anything right now. trying to book stoogeprac and fall shows, as well as some HIO action. enjoying spending time with my sweetie and the cats. still have a few people we wanna get together with before the summer's done. and i still have something like six days of vaca to burn from the market, so i have a few more three-day weekends coming up.

apropos of nothing, it's occurred to me that what makes the clash and the who (once the latter got popular) less than snazz is that self-referential songs by/about rock bands kind of suck.

pretty things

can't stop listening to parachute, and lately i'd been thinking about thisun, from freeway madness (from '73, not "sometime in the '60s," phil).

billy bragg

7.24.2010, ftw

in kind of a lull creatively. sleeping in a lot and not running, but not worried about it. it's summer. trying to hustle stoogeshows and set up prac, while psychically preparing myself for the big HIO/underground railroad/the shortest distance throwdown at lola's 6th next friday. tonight we'll be heading to the kessler in oak cliff to catch yells at eels with alvin fielder, sadly having to forego the nervebreakers at the hot klub reunion at trees, but ray and marlin are gonna catch thatun and i told ray to introduce himself to the nb's (two of whom have seen him perform with the li'l stoogeband) and suggest a fort worth show if they're down. meanwhile, i continue burning days of va-ca, with wed-fri off next week. hoping maybe it rains one of those days so i can maybe get to play guitar with frank cervantez. i could get used to this. will get back on the writing tip whenevah. meanwhile, wanna check out the new pho place in the same shopping center as the market. be nice if we had a decent viet/thai joint within walking distance of la casa.

calibro 35

italian soundtrack funkateers calibro 35 are touring the states in october. hope they come somewhere near here. (hey, liles...)

faces

remember seeing this on tv back in '70. there's so much great footage of these guys on youtube i'm surprised nobody's thought to do a dvd on them.

7.20.2010, ftw

while we were at my sister's last week, i found some 8x10 glossies of pics of me and my future ex-wife taken by andy haskett, the future tcu faculty member/radio station manager/singing australian cowboy, which in the fullness of time i'll prolly give to my kids if they want 'em. what's funny is that when i was 23, i had the same stupid haircut i do now, only back then it was black. consistency is some kind of virtue, i suppose.

daphne of the dunes

barstow

hot fun

i write like

spurred on by farren, i went to the i write like website and tried inputting something i wrote for ben trail when i was 28, followed by something i wrote for the fw weekly this year. in the first case it said oscar wilde, in the second, david foster wallace. i wonder what the other options are.

ADDENDUM: i tried inputting my last blog post, which the site said was like stephen king. wtf?

7.19.2010, ftw

my sweetie's b-day today. so happy she was born!

back to running/walking today. travel is so sedentary, i was way overdue. supposed to top out at 99 today, but when i went, there was still a sporadic breeze and some shade, even though it was humid has hell. seems all the schools in the 'hood are having construction done. parking lot at stripling is being resurfaced. ran a good long stretch from the botanic garden to montgomery. hydrated, changed clothes, then dumped greywater and mowed the front. the side yard will have to wait until baz (the partriarch of our feral cat family) isn't napping by the rain barrel.

lunching with mr. horn this arvo, then taking my sweetie to piola for din-din tonight. back to work tom'w, then off thu-fri (working on burning the rest of my vaca). i could get used to this pace.

nihilist spasm band

harry partch on vinyl

while in nj, i discovered that two of my fave harry partch recordings -- his masterwork delusion of the fury and the excellent introduction to his work the music of harry partch, which bruce wade and i used to listen to in the suny albany library -- have been reished on vinyl (see 'em on the forced exposure website here). both highly recommended, especially the latter.

bye, billie

my big sis gave me a record that includes this performance, from near the end of billie holiday's life. watch the nonverbals between her and lester young as he starts his solo. she died of cirhossis at age 44, 50 years ago yesterday. they say that he drank a bottle of bourbon every day and when he got tired of living, he just stopped eating. so much beauty from people near the end.

"barking sand"

when my ma was talking about this (at a beach on kauai, where she spent some of her early years), i thought she was pulling my leg. apparently she wasn't.

7.13-14.2010, schenectady

my buddy tom owns a liquor store in the neighborhood (rotterdam) where he grew up. he's had it for the last five years. before that, he was a sewer-pipe layer, forklift driver, house painter, nurse, comic book artist (marvel in the '80s!), and an adman. thirty-two years ago, he traveled down to texas with me, but only lasted six months before his friends and relatives pooled their money to fly him back home. (he reminded me of some of the details of why i unassed from the house in oak cliff after only two or three. whew!) he only plans to stay in biz until his youngest daughter completes her undergrad work -- she's the only student in her high school's history to get a perfect score on an a.p. exam, and she actually aced _two_ of 'em! then he and his wife are gonna move to the dominican republic or italy. (she: "but you don't speak italian!" he: "_you_ do." her parents are first-generation calabrese, just like the italian kid's.) i thought it was funny that tommy, who's irish, is a member of the gabriele d'annunzio chapter of the sons of italy. (me: "but tommy, wasn't he a fascist?" he: "i dunno. didja know that there wasn't an italian language until mussolini?") tom's a great cat with a wonderful family and it was a pleasure to see him again after all these years.

black flag's ron "chavo" reyes found at 50!

7.16.2010, nj/philadelphia/ftw

1) i think ma was sad to see us go. when we showed up around 10a, staff said she refused to get out of bed. we got her up and convinced her to drink her morning milkshake. told her we'd be back. as much as i dislike travel, i realize that she won't be this lucid and content forever. a down thought.

2) my sweetie likes her new gps (berfday prezzie from my big sis) real much. what she didn't like: driving an average of 120 miles a day for a week.

3) good to see my buddy geoff from philly and his wife elizabeth in their rock 'n' roll home near a trailhead in roxborough. but the air quality in the city billy penn built is frighteningly bad. it's like a noxious brown cloud sits on top of the city 24/7, making eyes burn and visibility poor.

4) ate lunch at winnie's le bus in manayunk, down the hill from roxborough -- a 'hood that formerly had a stereotypical "up the hill, down the hill" relationship with his, now changed due to the explosion of bars and restaurants in this funky li'l district. ate the fish and chips: panko-crusted tilapia with a remoulade. genius!

5) never, ever, ever rent from budget rent-a-car. we spent over an hour there on the way in, _with a reservation_. on the way out, we discovered that we'd been charged $129 for the insurance that my sweetie declined but the harried, multi-tasking employee either ticked on the the contract by accident or on purpose. i suspect the latter, only because the lady that waited an hour to speak to a manager the first time we were there was complaining about the same thing. read those line items before you initial 'em, kids! put me in mind of sears, which was banned from doing auto repair in louisiana when i lived there because of all the unnecessary work they bilked gullible customers into authorizing. i saw it myself, one afternoon i spent in their waiting room and heard _every single customer_ told, "sir/ma'am, there's something we need to show you," escorted back to the bay and told of some bogus malfunction which, unrepaired, would ostensibly have dire consequences. feh. think we'll be giving the better business bureau a call next week -- not that it'll accomplish anything.

6) finished barbara kingsolver's the lacuna on the plane. a damn good read, courtesy of my english-degree-holding daughter. (actually she brought it for my sweetie, but she knows i read everything she brings.) the protagonist's name is harrison shepherd -- a novelist with an interesting life trajectory. coincidentally, i knew a kid in fifth grade named shepherd harrison, whom i doubt has ever written anything.

7) glad to be home with our cats. even the "curmudgeon zone" on west 7th looked good on the way in. benito's for breakfast today. i need a haircut, a shave, and a couple pairs of pants. glad i still have three days before i have to go back to work -- including my sweetie's b-day monday. maybe i'll even run tomorrow, if it's not too hellish hot. and my middle dtr said she'd pay us a visit. (i have art prints from her cousin for her.)

but wait, there's more

katboy just uploaded our 5.9.2010 lola's palooza set to his stoogeaphilia archive. it's right there at the top. hooray!

7.15.2010, nj

as i think i mentioned earlier, my mom seems stronger this trip than she did last year. she can move from her wheelchair to the couch on her own. while her memory's not "coming back," she can retain some recent memories if they're of interest to her. she remembered what day we were leaving all week, for example, and my niece who's working in a sushi restaurant for the summer says that she consistently remembers that fact. if you ask her questions about the distant past (her childhood in hawaii, the time she spent in new york before she was married), she can remember a lot.

at the end of our visit the other day, when we spent some time talking to her about her life in the city, my sweetie asked her what we could bring her back and ma said, "bring me back new york city!" so we brought her back a cheap plastic statue of liberty replica and a book of photos of scenes from the city. she seemed to like that. she's gotten in the habit of bundling up her things (like pictures of her grandkids or the books of photos of our house we sent her) in a scarf or an afghan, but if you take them out and talk to her about them, she can stay engaged for a fair amount of time. will see her once more before we leave tomorrow.

stoogeaphilia @ caves lounge, 12.16.2009

katboy just posted his recording of our second and last stand at caves lounge (with magnus) on his stoogeaphilia archive (it's the second one from the top). yeah!

my scrawl in the fw weekly

a review i penned of the new 1919 hemphill compilation cd is in this week's paper and online now.

7.11-12.2010, dfw, philadelphia and new joisey

1) breakfast at the dfw t.g.i. friday's was $23. a five spot for bacon and eggs, but coffee was $5 a cup and o.j. $2.50 a (big, icy) glass. duh.

2) visibility on final approach sucked and it was a clear day. the air in philly makes my eyes sting.

3) our flight landed 20 minutes early, but we spent over an hour waiting to pick up our rent car _with a reservation_. never using budget rent-a-car again.

4) creepy: the guy on the rent car shuttle that had the psycho shower scene music as his ring tone.

5) stopped at a diner. she had a roast beef sammie that was o.k.; i had a gristly 8 oz. sirloin that tasted like fish at first (i got used to it), came with onion rings, fries, and an eye cup full of coleslaw. later, felt like i got punched in the gut.

6) my big sis has a pile of records for me, including blodwyn pig's ahead rings out, and some more she can't find, as well as a box of my old music books that might have gotten thrown away. wonder what's (or was) in thatun.

7) my mom's recent memory is pretty much non-existent but she seems stronger physically in some regards than when i saw her last year. had a nice visit. brought her some recent pics of our garden. talking about old times helps stimulate convo. will visit her again wednesday, thursday, and before we unass friday.

8) princeton record exchange rules. no ugly things (new ish has a nervebreakers feature as well as a kinks cover story); must cop online when i get home. no sir lord baltimore, raymond scott, or bruce haack (sorry, hickey and terry), but found a lenny breau alb on adelphi and a live trouble funk lp i used to have, as well as david murray's ming.

9) discovered a great indian place called tandoori bite on witherspoon street in princeton. beautiful food (my sweetie took pics!), great service, reasonably priced (and they comped our appetizer). if we lived here, we'd eat there all the time. only been open a coupla months.

10) driving in jersey is still weird but my big sis let us borrow "tom tom," her gps that works better than the one terry had the last time we played in dallas. the thing actually gives you prompts to turn before you have to turn. we'll take it with tomorrow when we head to schenectady, new york, to see my buddy tommy, whom i haven't seen in 30 years.

spanish psych from '68!

thanks to eric hermeyer for the link.

HIO @ marty leonard community chapel, 7.8.2010

t. horn's video of the first five minutes of our 35-minute performance is online now. can audio of the full performance be far behind?

from t. horn's laboratory

1919 hemphill

7.8.2010, ftw

inevitably, every new HIO recording becomes my favorite thing we've done, and the new one -- provisionally entitled metal elephant salvage (after the max ernst painting "celebes" which t. horn said he was reminded of by the sound of a bowed cymbal with a contact mic on it, run through a phase shifter and overdrive) -- is no exception. hickey has already (and quite hilariously, as is his wont) described the session on his blog, but that won't stop me putting my two cents in.

we recorded at the lena pope home's marty leonard chapel, where i'd heard joey carter play solo vibes at a wedding a few months ago. terry and hickey brought along several recording devices, at least a couple of which functioned sporadically, so we have five minutes of video currently available on facebook (only from a link on my wall at present; gotta love fb's foibles), and the full 51 minutes of audio, which will, i suppose, be posted to virb.com in the fullness of time.

the first five minutes or so are just me and big marcus warming up while terry and hickey get the recording gear situated. i'm playing the distressed autoharp and the aforementioned cymbal with contact mics attached. the cymbal sounds like _the thunder of god_ when played with the violin bow, or when the wind-up toys are released on it. i like the way my "main axe" keeps changing. during this sesh, i also played a cat-catching cage that charles the soundguy provided, with metal spring-loaded candle holders, and a bag of pot lids that terry bought from the thrift store.

marcus plays the diddley bow and discovered how to make feedback through the tee-tiny amp, which sounds like flutes on the recording. he also played the kids' toy flutes, terry's new instrument (aka "the box"), and the contents of terry's big suitcase full of percussion implements. hickey plays bass guitar as well as electric gopichand, while terry performs on cigarbox guitar, turntable, digital recorder and laptop.

the performance is episodic in the same way as the 10.17.2009 house recording was, with transition points usually occurring when one of us changes instruments. around 25 minutes or so into the performance, some lena pope students and their teachers came in to watch us play, and i reprised some of the sounds from earlier in the piece, which i thought worked as a structural device. terry stopped us at around 35 minutes without a visual cue, just winding down the sound. then we talked about the instruments and let the kids handle a few of them. it must have seemed very odd to them, but i'll bet they were happy to get out of class.

charles the soundguy offered to work for free if we want to record there again -- an offer too good to pass up. our next planned live action is a recording sesh behind doc's records for a release to be entitled exile on montgomery st. (after that rolling stones album people have been talking about again). terry and i went out to shoot some photos for the cover collage today.

vaca cd wallet

HIO - metal elephant salvage
gorillaz - detroit days
gorillaz - s/t
gorillaz - plastic beach
jeff beck group - the oldest lost tape
jeff beck group - miami '68
jeff beck - emotion and commotion
nina simone - anthology
broken flowers soundtrack
beastie boys - paul's boutique
rio grande babies - march through june 2001
mark growden - saint judas
jimi hendrix - first rays of the new rising sun
holmes brothers - righteous! the essential collection
darrin kobetich - songs for a muse meant
pat metheny/ornette coleman - song x
charles mingus sextet w/eric dolphy - cornell 1964
101'ers - elgin avenue breakdown
sir douglas quintet - 1 + 1 + 1 = 4/the return of doug saldana
rationals - think rational!
rjd2 - the colossus
matthew shipp - 4d
jason moran - modernistic
staff benda bilili - tres tres fort
the story of them featuring van morrison
richard thompson - 1000 years of popular music
henry threadgill - too much sugar for a dime
robert wyatt - cuckooland

anthony mariani's "the book of etna"

an excerpt from the italian kid's novel-in-progress is online now at ben marcus' website.

pssst! hey, kid! you like-a the jazz?

two oppos to hear bassist paul unger this week, both at the scat jazz lounge. tonight, he reunites with flipside (dennis durick on drums, dave monsch on sax) from 8-11:30p. thursday night, he performs john coltrane's a love supreme with shelly carrol (ts), kelly durbin (pno), and andrew griffith (ds) from 9-11:30p. yeah!

lou, laurie, and zorn ADDENDUM

weird. the link to the article referring to this performance disappeared from the HIO FB thingy. myself, i think it sounds beautiful.

e.c. (no, not _that_ one)

7.4.2010, ftw

run/walk with mr. horn in the morning, omelets on english muffins for brekkie, nap, walk to the custard place for lunch, joe strummer doc, now spinning my sweetie's pick of vinyl (boris, funkadelic, minutemen, elvis costello, tom waits, shannon jackson, small faces, ellington, cecil taylor, simon & garfunkel) while she cooks din-din. life's good.

ADDENDUM: rekkid party round two: can, kinks, who, patto, blood ulmer, david murray, ornette, brother ray live.

tell it, ray

armagideon time

listened to london calling last night for the first time in many, many years, and was about 50/50 wit' it. they were trying too hard to make a _big statement_, guy stevens egging them on in the studio resulted in too many overdubs, and too many instances of mick jones swinging for the phil spector-via-brooce springsteen fences. the best moments came when strummer reverted to his 101'ers roots-obsessive stance, with lotsa humor 'n' vitriol (which are not mutually exclusive). as a palate cleanser, i fell asleep to the second side of black market clash, three songs that i usedta own as an e.p. before my future ex-wife gave all my good records to goodwill in shreveport. this was one of 'em. i'll never forget hearing strummer sing this (after pounding his mic stand on the stage, as if to wake us all up) near the end of a cathartic two-hour show at armadillo world headquarters in austin, fall of '79. i'm reminded of that night every time i hear ph7 play this song.

7.3.2010, ftw

rekkid party at my house: the clash no (tryin' too hard), the replacements si (fuckin' up by the numbers but still making it work, somehow), doug sahm lo mejor even when not at his best (cat probably _sneezed_ music).

more HIO artifacts

HIO's world tour 2010 (two recent live sets from 1919 hemphill in ftw and the phoenix project in dallas) and warehouse session 1.15.2010 (recorded at the where house on hemphill with special guests including michael briggs and tammy gomez) are available to stream or download via virb.com, with nifty terry horn artwork. you know what to do.

lou, laurie, and zorn piss off the fans @ montreal jazzfest

from spinner canada.

conscientious projector presents "the future of food" @ 1919 hemphill, 7.22.2010

conscientious projector sends:

7-11pm. FREE!

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed about the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply. Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, The Future of Food examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world’s food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today. The Future of Food reveals that there is a revolution going on in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America, a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

maximum b&b

jbg2

waxeater/jabber josh/nervous curtains @ 1919 hemphill, 7.8.2010

dallas-based gothic cabaret act nervous curtains be's at 1919 hemphill, a venue i've promised myself to do a better job of supporting, on thursday, 7.8, performing as sacrificial locals before hoosier punks wax eater and jayhawk bass 'n' drum duo jabber josh. doors at 6p, six bucks gets you in. you know what to do.

HIO/the underground railroad/the shortest distance @ lola's 6th, 7.30.2010

i asked for a show, and for my sins they gave me one. HIO brings its own speshul mix of chaos, homemade/distressed instruments, field recordings, boing-boing-boing, anthropomorphic animals, and jimmy stewart to lola's 6th on friday, 7.30. doors at 9p, a crisp $6 bill gets you in ($10 under 21). also on the card: fort worth progfathers the underground railroad with new toonage and activist ramsey sprague doing his conscious singer-songwriter thang under the rubric the shortest distance. eclectic bills rule, because you wouldn't want to eat the same food all the time, wouldja?