Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The Delicacy of Rock-and-Roll

--from Dave Hickey's essay 'The Delicacy of Rock-and-Roll'

"Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us--simpatico dudes that we are--while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time--while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works--but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.

Rock-and-roll, on the other hand, presumes that the four of us--as damaged and anti-social as we are--might possibly get it to-fucking-gether, man, and play this simple song. And play it right, okay? Just this once, in tune and on the beat. But we can't. The song's too simple, and we're too damn complicated and excited. We try like hell, but the guitars distort, the intonation bends, and the beat just moves, imperceptibly, against our formal expectations, wether we want it to or not. Just because we're breathing, man. Thus, in the process of trying to play this very simple song together, we create this hurricane of noise, this infinitely complicated, fractal filigree of delicate distinctions.

And you can thank the wanking eighties, if you wish, and digital sequencers, too, for proving to everyone that technologically "perfect" rock--like "free" jazz--sucks rockets. Because order sucks. I mean, look at the Stones. Keith Richards is always on top of the beat, and Bill Wyman, until he quit, was always behind it, because Richards is leading the band and Charlie Watts is listening to him and Wyman is listening to Watts. So the beat is sliding on those tiny neural lapses, not so you can tell, of course, but so you can feel it in your stomach. And the intonation is wavering, too, with the pulse in the finger on the amplified string. This is the delicacy of rock-and-roll, the bodily rhetoric of tiny incriments, necessary imperfections, and contingent community. And it has it's virtues, because jazz only works if we're trying to be free and are, infact, together. Rock-and-roll works because we're all a bunch of flakes. That's something you can depend on, and a good thing too, because in the twentieth century, that's all there is: jazz and rock-and-roll. The rest is term papers and advertising."

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

march on the peninsula

Well, the Spenardcore Collective's recent maneuvers on the Kenai Peninsula were a great success. Stubby's Crack Co., Fats Tunamelt, Wang Gang, and los Gran Torinos' relentless missionary work made many converts to Spenardcore's round church ("so the devil can't corner me" -OD) in Seward and Homer. On St. Pat's day, los Gran Torinos played their first show to a crowd well over 100 at the Yukon Bar in Seward. Drinks (yes, this included Jameson rocks!!) for band members were $1. We were payed $200 to play--that's 200 drinks, folks!!! Best St. Pat's ever. The Homer show was great as well. Standing room only at Amped Cafe. We must have sold about 20 Spenardcore Records t-shirts and we ran out of torinos stickers.

big ups to:

*Bjorn and Amy for letting us crash at their cabin in Moose Pass playing fiddle, guitar, washboards, etc around the fire until the wee hours of the morning, cooking up a badass vegan breakfast, and then traveling to Homer to catch our last show.

*Chris in Homer for taking all 20 or so of us (he only knew one of us) back to his dome. Yeah, dome. It has one section that is all windows facing out across Kachemak Bay. The windows are configured in such a way that you feel like you're looking out of the Millenium Falcon. Chris served us up stuffed french toast, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn bread and good strong coffee in the a.m. and his neighbor came by and rolled about 8 cones. Damn fine people!!!

I still haven't fully recovered. At some point, I'll get a few stories from the trip up here. Just don't have it in me now.

rough outline:
4 bands, 4 days, 3 shows, 5 rigs, several fifths, a few friends, a coupla ounces, countless beers . . .

dogs:
Monkey, Survey, Rizzo, Lilith, Scout, Noah, Esa

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In other news, I'm really digging 'too much love' by Harlan T Bobo right now.

Here's a video of Harlan aiding Tim Prudehomme in a clown-clad version of Tim's song "George W Hitler."

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

"Your pigtails are starting to crumble"

An excerpt from 'What It Is', a short story by James Tate:

She stood there frowning. And then, uninvited, she sat down on a little rug. That rug had always been a mystery to me. No one knew where it came from and yet it had always been there. We never talked of moving it or throwing it out. I don't think it had ever been washed. Someone should at least shake it from time to time, expose it to some air.

"You're not even curious," she said.

"About what?" The coin was burning a hole in my hand. And the rug was begining to move, impeceptibly, but I was fairly sure it was begining to move, or at least thinking of moving.

"The package," she said. "You probably ordered something late at nightlike you always do and now you've forgotten. It'll be a suprise. I like it when you do that because you always order the most useless things."

"Your pigtails are starting to crumble," I said. "Is there anywhere in the world you would rather live?" I inquired. It was a sincere question, the last one I had in stock.

--Damn good shit, I tell ya. You can find 'Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee: 44 stories by James Tate' at Verse Press.

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After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

--Charles Wright

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On a comedy tip, ifilm shows us what Metallica fans do in there spare time.

Monday, March 14, 2005

get your oars back in the water kid . . .

"After all, judgement of others never really gets anywhere. It's been going on for thousands of years. The names change but the mechanism of blaming remains the same. Our distrust of others stems from the compulsion to defend our identity as a kind of private property, whereas true revolution is courageous because it involves surrender of ego. "

--from 'Killing the Madman' an interesting essay by poet Michael Brownstein in the latest edition of Arthur, in which Brownstein relates the awareness acheived in meditation to the awareness needed as an activist. You know, compassionate detachment and all that jazz.

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I found a used copy of Frederick Barthelme's Moon Deluxe the other day and am digging him quite a bit. This younger brother of Donald has not only written a number of books and had his art on display at MoMA, he was also the drummer on 'Parable of Arable Land,' the debut record by Texas psych pioneers The Red Krayola.

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recent heavy rotation:

Albert Ayler-- Spirits Rejoice
Quixotic--Mortal Mirror
M. Ward--Transistor Radio
Battles--EP C
James Brown--Black Caesar
Sun City Girls--Torch of the Mystics (thanks again to hackmuth for hooking a copy up. it's been a revelatory listen.)

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Stop by and check out the new shirts at Slow Loris. Globe, snorklehead, beer can, ram . . . I can't decide.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

slackmotherfucker

yeah yeah. it's been a while.

since my last post:

turned 31 on 25 feb. sophomore year of 30's has been good so far.
was invited (along w/ my band-- iLos Gran Torinos!) on my first tour. a march on the Kenai Peninsula.
purchased this laptop.

if you're kicking around the Kenai, come check us out:

Stubby's Crack Co.--(hawaiian lapsteel, sax, bass, drums, trumpet) will perform selections from their upcoming release that follows the ups and downs of Matt Dorman, a boy found in a dumpster who grows up to ride with the Spenard Satans, the baddest-assed bicycle gang you ever done seen.

Fats Tunamelt--schizophrenic rock songs about Bob Ross, PBR, Cavity Creeps and being your own dentist. one of the sickest drummers you'll see in these parts.

Wang Gang--fresh from the trainyard, stranded hobos making raw assed bluegrass fueled by cheap beer. banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, washboard, spoons, jugs, etc. wang gang is jimmy jazz and johnnie too-bad joined by various members of the other bands belting out everything from soldier's joy to the clash's straight to hell.

iLos Gran Torinos!--(guitar, baritone guitar, sax, bass, drums) a friend who just heard us said we reminded him of the Minutemen meets a surf rock Motorhead. not too sure that's an apt description but i sure do like it.

so far, we'll be at:

Yukon Bar in Seward on St. Pats day.
Elks Club in Seward on the 18th(this one's all ages, kids)
Amped Cafe in Homer on the 19th
possible show in soldotna on the 20th.
a pox on Maxine's in Girdwood for cancelling on us.

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In other news, Mayo Thompson, creator of one of my favorite records, is interviewed at Dusted.

Latest read is Tate's Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee and I must say, the shit is dope!