feeling hunky dory

Back from Ohio, slowly getting back into the world of NYC and yes, yes, still looking for somewhere to live for 2/1. I had a quiet, sort of wonderful xmas that involved ice-skating, roller skating and sled riding as well as shots on xmas day, lekvar pierogies, buckeyes and as Caleb said, cheese of every type in the natural and processed world. Setting by Gummo, culture by the Deer Hunter, this is my Ohio.

I finished my paper on disco-polo a few hours short of deadline, but am terribly interested in getting more sources together to perhaps do my EMP thingie on it...What are some good books/pieces on the history of Euro-house, Erasure-style new wave and generally more 'approachable' European electronic dance music styles? I'm thinking about turbo-folk in particular, as written about in the book Guerrilla Radio.

Am trying to get into a class called "Recording Angels," like the Evan Eisenberg book - and realized that I'm becoming sort of a early recording junkie, aka, when I finally break the 'burg and become a retired yuppie somewhere, I'm going to have a huge victrola collection, then Caruso will be my main squeeze. It's all part of my elaborate retirement plan involving opening an antique store on Magazine Street, hours 10:30-1pm, 2-3:45pm, Czech and Nepali speaking only, then retiring to my house in the lower garden district where i shall sit with friends on rocking chairs on my veranda whittling gnomes. Space is limited, reserve in advance!

cold-blooded old times

At least the ACLU will condemn the illustrious city of Warwick (my hometown for all of two months after my apartment fire last year) and their decision to change the liquor license for the owner of a hip hop club where a shooting had occurred. Uncanny how both the Ohio shooting was invoked and that this occured within a week of the Oregon anti-hip hop club decision. Please, dear readers, keep sending me examples of this type of censorship for my paranoid mind to process.

bought 100 swift dollars worth of disco polo at Music Planet today, after having a sort of barfy little brunch at Enid's. i'm really into *into* Shazza at the moment, mostly for purposes of ye olde grad school paper. She's a 20 something polish-language pop star of the disco-polo star whose persona revolves around her fantasy have having been an Egyptian princess exiled to the desert for her love affairs. Whatever that means. I am listening to her music RIGHT NOW and it sounds like a cross between Erasure, the Sugarcubes and, well, every euro-house track you've ever heard.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Jon Fine, of Coptic Light, a band my band used to play with back in the day, has married Laurel Touby of the Mediabistro empire. Since it's a matter for the NY Times wedding section, I feel entitled to blog about it.

ROCK SHOWS:

Saw Joanna Newsom/Smog/Weird War last night. I am a hesitator on the Newsom front, mostly because that whole weirdo-grain-incredible-string-band vocal thing just sends me spinning, but it was of course truly magical and she is incredibly talented. maybe i'm nuts but it seems like the harp is a hard instrument to expressive with. She manages with indeed that voice, the Bjork-y burbles and screams, whispers and a healthy dose of ritardando. Smog was, smog (how many years can you play the guitar on stage without getting very much better at it?) and Weird War saw me saying the faux pas "Man, Ian Svenious should like, sue this guy for copyright infringement" which betrays to you 1) how much I usually don't pay attention to drag city bands anymore and 2) how insanely fallen and pathetic Mr. Svenious is in these days. He looked cracked, stared ackwardly and sang lyrics like "why do girls like boys..like that?," out of irony, but really, it became apparent that the dude is wholly out of the reality in which most everyone else around him moves. The round robin nature of the show made is so that people had to stick thru three songs for each, and Weird War made me not want to stay for the encore. Alas.

the bellydancing christmas tree

in the middle of final cramming bs but took time out to read a listserv post inviting me to a show where the talents of said subject would be employed - how's that for holiday cheer? i love people's weird attempts to be non-traditional while still embracing the tiny baby jesus - really! i'm the most pro-tradition atheist you might meet, which is why i think i study ethnomusicology - i simply must steal all the world's traditions, sift thru them, and make my own hybrid faux religion no unlike that of genesis p. and create a cult who will take part in my ceremonies. what should be first?

oh man, i've been studying too long.

i have nothing else to report except oscar wilde's genius and that you should click thru to my voice piece. i'm excited abt it even tho those chix are putting out a new old record immediately following this one. argh blargh. also, i know it's not on me, but isn't that the worst press photo one would ever hope to shoot? this is why SOMEBODY should have let ME write about Gwen Stefani. Why do I always end up writing about all the weird art school chix? I have several hunches. Anyway, I usually sorta agree w. Mr. Harris, but I have to beg that he probably did NOT have the same experience w/ Lady Gwen as the whole grown-up-in-the-90s set, girls esp., and is doing the whole 'she's not madonna so it's not real subversion' thing, which is a big fat so what. I mean, there's something really WEIRD abt Gwen, her progression, her voice, her background (ska pop princess turned 'dance music' x-over model???) that begs a deeper set of thoughts...by me...someone...anyone???

say goodbye to anal magic

in the annals of anti-anal that is the FCC, a friend said that the WFMU show Anal Magic by Kenny G was recently asked to change its name. Now, come on. It's WFMU, and the guy is clearly into subversion - aren't there like Lindsay Lohan songs to go pick on or something?

went to the Plexi-xmas party and saw Archer Prewitt do a little solo set among the drunk skateboard dvd enthusiasts and overwhelming number of former insound employees. yes, i am lame and i still like some of the post-rockin'ist chicago white boys with too much gear jazzin' it up about being middle-aged, i like it. Archer Prewitt writes great songs with weird lyrics that are well developed and funny little 70s prog guitar lines that aren't ironic like when Jim O'Rourke does it. Also, he dresses fastidiously. he looks like a watch maker. i like him. his new record is awesome and you should listen to it if you like awesome things, like you would like ted leo if ted leo were always awesome and not totally hit or miss. that is all.

She's Leaving Home

Hey blog readers:

You may not have known this, but I have been a gal in conflict. I have ended my angst and decided to move from my distant Bushwick digs to somewhere, anywhere closer to school, friends, record stores, signs of life, etc. I need your help tho, because everyone I know is happily dug in to their own places, and I need a roomie to look with or a decent place to move in to. My, you know, roommate bio, is below:

Mid-20s music grad student + one big, much-loved black cat (clipped nails, doesn’t scratch, about five-years-old) looking for a biggish room + a little apt. space in a share in the Williamsburg/greenpoint/nearer E. Williamsburg L area. Me =
non-cooking veggie-eater, non-smoking, mostly quiet (I listen to music, but not loudly), musician and writer who needs a decent room with space for a double bed and probably two desks. I have a cello, small bass rig and a large record collection that I usually try to keep in the common space, but could have in my room if it were large enough. I go to Columbia but want to live around friends and near enough to coffee shops, venues, and you know, grocery stores and things. I also have a car which I would like to keep in the city, so either street parking or a lot nearby would be awesome.

I would prefer to live with someone who is mature, arts-minded, and independent and who doesn’t spend an enormous amount of time in the kitchen. I’m open to lots of different lifestyles and habits, and don’t care if I live with a man or woman. I would hope that the apt. would have DSL/wireless, decent light and a generally aesthetically pleasing atmosphere. I would hope that my room have two sets of outlets and a..window.. I'm currently in the city (Bushwick, ahh) and am looking to
move in sometime between right....now and 2/1. I have most of the month of Jan. open, so moving in during that month would be ideal. email: pinkgerl@yahoo.com.

darkness on the edge of town

Hmm...just read about how a Medford, Oregon decided to not let E-40 play a show at their teen club bc of his affiliation with 'gang culture.' Curiously, he'd played there in '01 and '03. Does this have anything to do with Frank Rich's column on the Plot Against Sex In America and, in general, the ability of government officials to arbitrarily decide what's best for people not based on law or public consent, but on 'our best judgement' or 'common sense' both of which to me signify 'the dominant ideology.' In the case of Oregon, I would imagine that the dominant ideology doesn't mean lettin anything in that 'jus grew. Has the reelection of George Bush in some way meant that for the next four years, small town conservatives have free license to censor minority opinions (or even unpopular majority opinions, say, about the war?) because of this mythical 'conservative majority' so oft quoted as a reason for the lost demo victory? Ahahahahahahaha...

I would like to believe that there is some other reason for this, and I haven't listened to E-40. Someone out there prove me wrong, please.

the politics of dancing

Went to the Move Against AIDS benefit last night, and danced with my Witches of Eastwick team. I'm happy to announce that we made, I think, $5000 among the 12 of us. Theme for the evening: the inevitable Madonna remix. Both Danny and Junior dropped theirs, and everyone else played their Beyonce or Britney 3rd wave. The crowd was mixed, by interest and generation, between miserable raver types in costume with the freak flags, gay men in groups dressed smartly, assorted dance groups in matching shirts, and everyone else - a mix of ages, races, most everyone dancing, no one too ridiculously flashy club. The Javits Center is uniquely un-ideal as a dance venue - hard floors, enormous ceilings and big empty space in which the bass decay was so long that it was one big, ugly rumble. my ears felt it, for sure. Still, people were delightfully non-complaining, even with long coat lines and a weird VIP room (for those raising over $250, free beer!).

I was caught in this line of thinking that's been bothering me lately. I get really mad when people commit the fallacy of logic that feminism = woman, that men can't be feminists (and I know many who self-identify as such, so I'm not calling this a universal) and that in orde to be engaged with the fight for equality from some standpoint, you have to be in that standpoint. My brand of feminism means equality, which means for race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and anything else. It's not easy, and of course I get caught up in anti -ism thinking that makes me question myself and where my bias/fear/insecurites come from, but I try to do that conciously. Well, I guess my thing is that because I'm a woman, it most directly catches me when someone says or does something that is ugly towards women in general or a woman in particular (when it seems motivated not be individual traits, but by the blanket bias against gender). I would imagine that it's likewise for people living with the reprocussions of other traditionally disempowered groups.
My brain freeze, as thinking last night is, 'hey, I'm not gay and I don't even know anyone who has had or does have HIV/AIDS, why does this matter to me?' because so much of the rhetoric and stage performance was about that, but it comes back to that vague universal desire for people to be safe, able to get what they need, and able to experience happiness. My fear is, do I spend too much time thinking about gender because of self-interest, when there are other things out there more pressing?

That said, I read that A Love Supreme is 40 years old this week.

IN OTHER NEWS: if you're into the pressures of classical music stardom, check out this unusual Times piece, The Julliard Effect, which is exactly the type of reporting about music and culture that I'd like to do.

band nerds and orchestra geeks

went to see anti-social music last night, a sort of orchestra of talented musicos playing fuzzboxed, be-pedalled, scored ensemble works, all the while wearing converse and jeans. yes, visions of nigel kennedy dance in your head, but this is more like the pit orchestra turned stage, complete with half-drunk cellist commenting 'ohh, it's soooo quiet' between movements.' as friend maria, pianist to said ensemble, said 'daphne, they have your sense of humor,' which is to say, smartass orchestra geek humor. a very specific brand. anyway, the highlight was a scored work by dalek, which was mostly like a rumbling, than trembling shimmer of orchestra noise, like a moment out of penderecki, with visions of a beat in the bassoon. I know it was a challenge to score, and I think it went well.

Brahahah, Xmas party on Ave. D. Holy gentrification, batman! I was in the nicest elevator apartment, where my lovely hostess made cookies and mulled cider. Curiously, no music to be played, tho it was a new-to-town music critic extravaganza. Then, then, then, I heard the Charlie Brown x-mas CD, pure Outkast syntethesia, and I was okay again. Some roommate (to clarify, not the lovely hostess) forced us to watch the trailer for the new Wes Anderson film and kept saying, "wait, the best part is coming up," which belies that for some segments of the culture, the concept of 'the trailer' has superceded the film itself. What would Barthes do?

I am getting offline RIGHT NOW so I can get ready for the Move Against AIDS danceathon. Kerri just called and asked if I was in the right mental place for such a thing, I mean, Lil' Kim is hosting, and I couldn't exactly say yes. But, I have faith that I shall become excited even as I drive towards the subway (oh alas, my bushwick existence).

dimebag darrell r.i.p.

the story of the shooting of "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott is one of the sickest and most horrible things that has happened in music probably since Woodstock 1999. (I would include the Station fire, but it was an accident. For amazing coverage of how that event unfolded, see the Providence Journal's 160 stories, including a step-by-step of the club's ownership, about the tragedy).

I cannot imagine the horror of having been in that audience, or the incredible sadness of family and friends getting a phone call that their loved one is dead because some psychotic, paranoid metal fan decided to seek revenge and take other people as well. I hope to see Columbus do some excellent reporting on this, because I am deeply interested in the motivation of this nutso and because I fear that this may a have deeply negative for the rock and metal live show world.

It's times like this that I really think about how the extreme lauditory nature of music sociology has missed something -- something about the negative and dark parts of fandom, of the collapse between fantasy and reality for some people, and how music and the cultures surrounding it are powerful and often mishandled, treated as 'pop' when, for so many people, it is the way that they frame their emotional lives, good or bad.

friends speak abt DBD
MTV coverage

Every step that I take is another mistake to you

according to billboard:

JAY-Z, LINKIN PARK 'MASH-UP' TOPS ALBUM CHART

The seemingly odd pairing of a multiplatinum artists from the rap and
rock worlds takes an underground concept to the pinnacle of the
mainstream as "MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups Presents Jay-Z/Linkin Park:
Collision Course" bows atop The Billboard 200 this week. The Warner
Bros./Roc-A-Fella CD/DVD set sold 368,000 copies in the United States,
according to Nielsen SoundScan.

harghghghghgh. mash ups, the genre clover loves to hate, played up, played out, grey albumed, now selling 400k bc the Brothers Numb threw some aggro-garbage over those delicious beats.

IN OTHER NEWS: Awesome album alert

i just popped in Jennifer Gentle's "Valende" and it's AMAZING italian psych-folk, meandering, lush, incredibly recorded whisper vocals over acoustic guitars and little pastoral bells. Perfect moment among the new weird America to drop this - actually well thought out, moody, mature gem of a record.

i know i won't be leaving here with you

so, franz ferdinand was nominated for three grammy's. blah blah, can anyone even stand that song anymore?

today is shitty/raing/garbage. i have gotten myself a ny public library card so i can rent movies, and the first is black orpheus. back in the "front row center" zine days (which still could come again), a friend of a friend wrote me an eloquent essay about how that album was the high point of sophistication for his father's generation, and i'm sad to say i haven't heard it. hopefully i'll get a little clued in.

or the myth of fingerprints

i got sucked into an ethnomusic night and i didn't even know it. a friend of a friend was playing at joe's pub, which isn't something that happens to me often since, well, joe's pub is classy and expensive and usually full of yuppies or people dancing to hip hop and while i wish i had more friends who were always dancing to hip hop, right now i don't. feel free to ask me if you're out there. anyway, i went to joe's pub and you know, they want you to buy drinks and pretend you're in the weimar republic and clap clap clap with their nice, intelligent stage lighting, etc etc, and then this band gets on stage.

First thing I noticed was that one dude had a really big, well, a really big guitar, which wasn't a guitar at all, but a guitarron, that he played like a bass. It had a cool case and I'd like to see someone carrying one on the subway. Anyway, the band was Luminescent Orchestrii, which is a band name in Romanian I think. They played umm...what they called gypsy music. They had a Ukrainian women's choir that sang between their sets, they umm, said on stage that they collected folk songs but couldn't remember them and so they made up other stuff instead. There was glitter, there were stripped (read -strip-ED, like the name, not -ed, strip-pED), there was fiddlin.

This lady Rima, who played fiddle in the band and also sang, seemed to know what the fuck was going on. Yes, people, that's what I'm saying. Authentic. I never have these horrible horrible worries about 'the authentic' because i never go to anything that tries to be umm. real. and by that i mean 'tries.' also, i'm not used to seeing bands where the band members are in 'costume' like, not karen o wearing christian joy, but like, girls wearing, you know, 'concert clothes' which is where i insert a story about how when my parents got divorced when i was young, my mom couldn't afford to buy me 'concert clothes' for every orchestra concert, and other kids would make fun of me for wearing the same thing as last time. okay, that didn't really happen, exactly, or maybe it did, but concert clothes always strike me as 'nervous clothes' or 'i'm not 100% committed to this' clothes. concert clothes. costumes. gimmicks. penny whistles. Oh my. Ethnomusic. Anyway, it was mostly okay music, spirited and fun and the band was full of chix with chops, but seriously not my thing - (I kept thinking of the last Roma concert I went to, in Prague, where it was sweaty and hot and full of smoke and the band played forever and their suits were stained and old, and it was generations of men, only men, up on stage...sick, that i should crave that and not this, cool, composed, willfully transgressive act in the name of art -- or is it?)

now i'm listening to this heat to cleanse myself.

lil skateboard P

Today I have officially reached saturation point with "Drop It Like It's Hot." Yes, I am charmed when Pharrell calls himself "lil skateboard P" but not so in his earlier allusion to the relative whitness of his yacht. Maybe this is his way of trading in hipster cache for street cred -which, I'm sure in the cyclical nature of male-infatuation grown up, only means more hipster cred. Alas, what would the world be without crass depictions of oral sex? Certainly no place for the Hidden Cameras. And ya, Snoop rhymes side with side in this lazy ass little video game jam, totally lame.

I have been reading Christine Yano's book "Tears of Longing" about the Japanese music enka. I've been trying to umm..find...some of it online and seem to not really know where to start. I think it might be a little to weirdly weird for me - like, a sentimental nationalist music derived from blues but only in the cultivation of the social construction of weariness and sadness, but not like, musical? and then...well, Yano's very few references to the music in relation to American music all have to do with older country...and the production system is like the star system of old or the last 10 years of pop production, but totally and completely geared towards mostly middle-aged women. It's like a whole world of Barbara Streisand. (btw, that link is soooo Fear and Loathing..., does anyone else have a problem thinking of C. Ricci as anything but Wednesday?). and, well, I have a feeling that the production of the music is going to sound like those really corny Whitney Houston ballads, like 'isn't this the most famous female vocalist in America? why don't you, umm, hire and orchestra instead of using that lame synth?'

on another note, i am weary with the prospect of top ten end of the year lists. if i were matos i'd be all over that shit and 1966 at the same time, or if I were sfj, i'd already be way into next year. Well, I'm not, and my flower-bedecked, fawn springing, frivolous girl mind just can't get wrapped around the wordy listinghood, but I do it because that's what keeps the boys talking. Stats. Not a diss to the Matos or the SFJ, btw, just the game.

more like jenny from a flock of pigeons

Ya, I've been lax. Here's what's been going on:

1) I lost my voice in the middle of my annual 'call every club in the US for Club Systems' spree. Also, I interviewed Daniel Givens with 100% no voice - the MD transcription was high comedy - he's a gracious man and his CD is difficult but worth the spin.

2) I got my wisdom teeth out, yes, four, no, no just local. When I showed up at the office, they didn't know why I was there and didn't have my records. s.c.a.r.y. I listened to the Nihilist Spasm Band while they were ripping the fuckers out. Very savage, that process. Medical science may have advanced in some areas, but dentistry is pure medieval.

3.) Loveliest thanksgiving on record. Went to old roomie's house in NJ - collectively they made me an entire veggie meal, tho they're all carnivores.

awh, I can't keep making this list. Brahahaha. Well, last night I went to Crobar with Caryn to see Sasha DJ - the place is totally middlebrow in a way that honestly made me feel totally okay - all the pretention was so B&T that it didn't even phase me. Sasha was DJing with only with a laptop and some outboard gear...I was covering it for CSI...and the crowd was positively electric after a pretty dull opening DJ spinning the worst, least interesting trance I've ever heard in my life (now that's saying something). Caryn and I went into the VIP lounge which was full of eurotrash dancing to that horrible new Ja Rule track, etc etc. They played "Sweet Home Alabama" which prompts me to wonder, how does one dance to Sweet Home Alabama?" I had so much fun that I think I'm going to start using my lame access via the trade pub to start going dancing more often.

That is all I have to say right now, other than you should listen to Lady Sovereign's "Sad Arse Strippa" track, it's ridiculous. She's like 18. SFJ is totally going to New Yorker her ass when that album comes out.