Looking for The Music Issue?
The Music Issue is now here at its new funboring home.
I will be keeping this archive up for some time but new posts go only to the funboring.com site.
Many thanks and great listening to you all on the other side of the screen.
12.05.2007
2.24.2007
"Don't you forget about me."
This is a long post.
Peter Scholtes said it well - it was like watching someone you loved dying on tv. Imagine a more impersonal horror. New Orleans, a city of supreme sensuality, of endless music, of tangled history, a city blending America with Europe in ways no other American city ever has, a town in which my dad was a teacher, that my aunt lived in for two dozen years, that I lived in for one youthful summer and visited since childhood - I watched it drown from a tv. I was in Germany, trying to dance in sold-out techno parties with a cadre of internationals. I lost my credit card, had no money, and became trapped in my hotel with no money for food, making myself sick watching German-language reporting of this American tragedy, inable to eat anyway at the scenes unfolding in places I knew like a backyard. That could have been...our house. I lost my voice.
It's been a year and a half, and I just got myself down to New Orleans. I went because it was Mardi Gras season, so I could Mardi Gras and work too. Work I did. First, for Habitat for Humanity, on the Musicians Village project, which aims to build something like 150 homes for musicians displaced by the waters:
Putting Jazz Back in New Orleans
By Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor. Posted February 27, 2007.
We worked for three days on the project. The first day we built window guards to keep people from stealing materials from unfinished homes at night. On the flight home I heard a cabinetmaker from NOLA talking about how contractors have been hiring security after he puts his cabinets in - people spend all night ripping them out. The second day we ripped aluminum to make trim - incredibly time-consuming and probably not the best use of labor, but it had to be done and we were there. The third day we teamed together with our pals Jim and Ben from the earlier days and built a deck on the porch of a bass player named Michael Harris. Now that was a good time. You need a deck? Call me.
Habitat has come under some criticism for their response in New Orleans:
Volunteer Group Lags in Replacing Gulf Houses
By LESLIE EATON and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: February 22, 2007
I also felt a little odd working for a Xtian group, but their one day of prayer (Saturday, biggest crowd) wasn't bad and in fact, if I switched "God" to "Y'all" in the speech "God, let us come together today to help one another out..." I was fine and in agreement with the vibe - yes, we should all be working down there when we can. In fact, it reminds me of what Evelyn McDonnell said of her experience in New Orleans. Being in the 9th Ward makes me want to pray, just in case.
I also went down to do some podcast stories for Associated Press - asap. I was inspired by my friend and Columbia University collegue Matt Sakakeeny, who did this great story on the Hot 8 Brass Band drummer and high school band teacher Dinerral Shavers tragic murder during the Xmas season:
My first piece was on Tipitina's, an uptown nightclub honoring Professor Longhair, a staple for the Tulane crowd. I'd written about Tip's a few years in the past (and also saw my first Fugazi concert there when I was 16) and decided it was the best of all possible venues. In addition to all the obvious - great booking, great staff, great sound - they worked with the city to make a musician's co-op office with computers, printers, fax machines, mail boxes and also around 200 practice rooms. They also teach high school students the basics of audio engineering and the music business in a mentorship program and give instruments to the city's strapped public school music programs. That's especially a big deal since Katrina:
New Orleans nightclub to the rescue
By Daphne Carr
A Struggle For Bands To Regain Footing
By JON PARELES
Published: February 20, 2007
As this NY Times piece reports, Katrina hurt students in the city's junior and high school marching bands, which have long been the training ground for tomorrow's pro musicians. Not to mention, they are the best part of the parades - even the ones that are a little out of tune play with such passion and the young women marching in their dancelines are unstoppable. The sound of their taps scuffing the city streets to the offbeat of the drumline is to me the essential sound of Mardi Gras:
Mardi Gras marching orders
By Daphne Carr
Saturday night we also dropped in to see the famous swamp tech impresario Quintron at his rebuilt Spellcaster Lodge in the upper 9th Ward. The community I always understood him to be part of is this artsy SanFran feeling boho group of folks who live in the Bywater area west of the French Quarter, and Q has been in the 9th ward for quite a long time.
Bohemian Rhapsody
By Daphne Carr
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record the songs of the Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian gang who we saw at The Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme on Mardi Gras day. Curator/founder Sylvester Francis was giving a most righteous toast to the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, who addressed the audience of dancers and singers, asking for people to join together for the community.
Injuns Here Dey Come
In Offbeat (author unknown)
We drove through different parts of town on that day, in the 3rd ward past the Magnolia projects where lots of Mardi Gras Indians where in the streets to Treme and down to the lower 9th. Here, after a week of rebuilding, celebrating, allowing myself pleasure at the creature beauty New Orleans can bring, I drove in silence, again in tears, again without a voice. How can these spaces still be empty? How can dozens of blocks be gone, their inhabitants inable to even find the streets without cardboard posts?
Dozens more blocks of homes empty, one trailer with someone building - a homesteader, a hopeful person, but how long until they have neighbors, old friends, history? We stayed uptown, where my family lived, and while I was staying there I felt relieved thinking "at least some part of what I remember is still here," but driving through these neighborhoods was enough to make the rest of the city seem gone - how could people turn their backs on their neighbors like this?
How can our country turn its back like this on people who suffered something so traumatic? The thing that made me most disturbed is that it looked Youngstown, OH, my hometown, or Detroit - 50 years of disinvestment and neglect but rendered instantly and flatly to such obviously cheerful, modest family homes.
My mom lives in a rance slab house on a street of the same - the houses of the 9th ward looked just like hers. This is the hardheaded way of learning empathy, just standing there looking at trees that used to shade folks on porches now shading empty lots, maybe forever, thinking 'this could be anywhere, but would the story end the same way every time?' But for me, I couldn't understand until I stood there.
One of the people whose writing I've liked (also Alex Rawls and the whole OffBeat gang - kudos) on the subject of post-Katrina is Peter Scholtes, who recently wrote:
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Gone, or "Katrina documentaries talk, argue, and ultimately fall silent before disaster." The whole time I was down in New Orleans I kept thinking "what else can I do about this?" and one of the things I kept thinking about was trying to get other music writers to go down to New Orleans to work, write and observe. I even had fantasies about running a music press junket, and may start bugging people about it soon.
In this year's Da Capo, I looked really hard for great writing about this situation and found some, but I see no reason why there shouldn't be reams of it. This is a story that needs to stay in the spotlight until everyone, EVERYONE, is embarassed about it and demands results and since New Orleans has been considered worldwide as the birthplace and sustainer of America's great music - jazz - and dozens of other vernacular musical traditions, I see no reason why music journalists shouldn't lead the brigade of folks keeping the city in the spotlight.
That said, I only went to New Orleans for a week. On the way home, I sat on the plane thinking - you know, I lived in NOLA for four months one summer and I've visited for a week or so for at least eight years. How long before a year of my life was spent in New Orleans? How long before I've 'lived' in New Orleans? People from the city joke that newcomers are people who've put in 15 years or less, and most people have been there through the generations. I'll never bee one of those people, it's too late. But it's never to late to start falling in love with it, start getting to know it, to start helping. A year and a half after the fact, it still needs some work. Find the time and the city will reward you.
UPDATES:
New Orleans Mon Amour, a film by Michael Almereyda for 2008
Bush acknowledges frustrations in New Orleans
March 1, 2007
Get angry again
If there were ever a good reason for blacks to be mad, New Orleans is it.
February 28, 2007
Peter Scholtes said it well - it was like watching someone you loved dying on tv. Imagine a more impersonal horror. New Orleans, a city of supreme sensuality, of endless music, of tangled history, a city blending America with Europe in ways no other American city ever has, a town in which my dad was a teacher, that my aunt lived in for two dozen years, that I lived in for one youthful summer and visited since childhood - I watched it drown from a tv. I was in Germany, trying to dance in sold-out techno parties with a cadre of internationals. I lost my credit card, had no money, and became trapped in my hotel with no money for food, making myself sick watching German-language reporting of this American tragedy, inable to eat anyway at the scenes unfolding in places I knew like a backyard. That could have been...our house. I lost my voice.
It's been a year and a half, and I just got myself down to New Orleans. I went because it was Mardi Gras season, so I could Mardi Gras and work too. Work I did. First, for Habitat for Humanity, on the Musicians Village project, which aims to build something like 150 homes for musicians displaced by the waters:
Putting Jazz Back in New Orleans
By Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor. Posted February 27, 2007.
We worked for three days on the project. The first day we built window guards to keep people from stealing materials from unfinished homes at night. On the flight home I heard a cabinetmaker from NOLA talking about how contractors have been hiring security after he puts his cabinets in - people spend all night ripping them out. The second day we ripped aluminum to make trim - incredibly time-consuming and probably not the best use of labor, but it had to be done and we were there. The third day we teamed together with our pals Jim and Ben from the earlier days and built a deck on the porch of a bass player named Michael Harris. Now that was a good time. You need a deck? Call me.
Habitat has come under some criticism for their response in New Orleans:
Volunteer Group Lags in Replacing Gulf Houses
By LESLIE EATON and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: February 22, 2007
I also felt a little odd working for a Xtian group, but their one day of prayer (Saturday, biggest crowd) wasn't bad and in fact, if I switched "God" to "Y'all" in the speech "God, let us come together today to help one another out..." I was fine and in agreement with the vibe - yes, we should all be working down there when we can. In fact, it reminds me of what Evelyn McDonnell said of her experience in New Orleans. Being in the 9th Ward makes me want to pray, just in case.
I also went down to do some podcast stories for Associated Press - asap. I was inspired by my friend and Columbia University collegue Matt Sakakeeny, who did this great story on the Hot 8 Brass Band drummer and high school band teacher Dinerral Shavers tragic murder during the Xmas season:
Drummer's Funeral Underlines New Orleans Violence
My first piece was on Tipitina's, an uptown nightclub honoring Professor Longhair, a staple for the Tulane crowd. I'd written about Tip's a few years in the past (and also saw my first Fugazi concert there when I was 16) and decided it was the best of all possible venues. In addition to all the obvious - great booking, great staff, great sound - they worked with the city to make a musician's co-op office with computers, printers, fax machines, mail boxes and also around 200 practice rooms. They also teach high school students the basics of audio engineering and the music business in a mentorship program and give instruments to the city's strapped public school music programs. That's especially a big deal since Katrina:
New Orleans nightclub to the rescue
By Daphne Carr
A Struggle For Bands To Regain Footing
By JON PARELES
Published: February 20, 2007
As this NY Times piece reports, Katrina hurt students in the city's junior and high school marching bands, which have long been the training ground for tomorrow's pro musicians. Not to mention, they are the best part of the parades - even the ones that are a little out of tune play with such passion and the young women marching in their dancelines are unstoppable. The sound of their taps scuffing the city streets to the offbeat of the drumline is to me the essential sound of Mardi Gras:
Mardi Gras marching orders
By Daphne Carr
Saturday night we also dropped in to see the famous swamp tech impresario Quintron at his rebuilt Spellcaster Lodge in the upper 9th Ward. The community I always understood him to be part of is this artsy SanFran feeling boho group of folks who live in the Bywater area west of the French Quarter, and Q has been in the 9th ward for quite a long time.
Bohemian Rhapsody
By Daphne Carr
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record the songs of the Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian gang who we saw at The Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme on Mardi Gras day. Curator/founder Sylvester Francis was giving a most righteous toast to the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, who addressed the audience of dancers and singers, asking for people to join together for the community.
Injuns Here Dey Come
In Offbeat (author unknown)
We drove through different parts of town on that day, in the 3rd ward past the Magnolia projects where lots of Mardi Gras Indians where in the streets to Treme and down to the lower 9th. Here, after a week of rebuilding, celebrating, allowing myself pleasure at the creature beauty New Orleans can bring, I drove in silence, again in tears, again without a voice. How can these spaces still be empty? How can dozens of blocks be gone, their inhabitants inable to even find the streets without cardboard posts?
Dozens more blocks of homes empty, one trailer with someone building - a homesteader, a hopeful person, but how long until they have neighbors, old friends, history? We stayed uptown, where my family lived, and while I was staying there I felt relieved thinking "at least some part of what I remember is still here," but driving through these neighborhoods was enough to make the rest of the city seem gone - how could people turn their backs on their neighbors like this?
How can our country turn its back like this on people who suffered something so traumatic? The thing that made me most disturbed is that it looked Youngstown, OH, my hometown, or Detroit - 50 years of disinvestment and neglect but rendered instantly and flatly to such obviously cheerful, modest family homes.
My mom lives in a rance slab house on a street of the same - the houses of the 9th ward looked just like hers. This is the hardheaded way of learning empathy, just standing there looking at trees that used to shade folks on porches now shading empty lots, maybe forever, thinking 'this could be anywhere, but would the story end the same way every time?' But for me, I couldn't understand until I stood there.
One of the people whose writing I've liked (also Alex Rawls and the whole OffBeat gang - kudos) on the subject of post-Katrina is Peter Scholtes, who recently wrote:
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Gone, or "Katrina documentaries talk, argue, and ultimately fall silent before disaster." The whole time I was down in New Orleans I kept thinking "what else can I do about this?" and one of the things I kept thinking about was trying to get other music writers to go down to New Orleans to work, write and observe. I even had fantasies about running a music press junket, and may start bugging people about it soon.
In this year's Da Capo, I looked really hard for great writing about this situation and found some, but I see no reason why there shouldn't be reams of it. This is a story that needs to stay in the spotlight until everyone, EVERYONE, is embarassed about it and demands results and since New Orleans has been considered worldwide as the birthplace and sustainer of America's great music - jazz - and dozens of other vernacular musical traditions, I see no reason why music journalists shouldn't lead the brigade of folks keeping the city in the spotlight.
That said, I only went to New Orleans for a week. On the way home, I sat on the plane thinking - you know, I lived in NOLA for four months one summer and I've visited for a week or so for at least eight years. How long before a year of my life was spent in New Orleans? How long before I've 'lived' in New Orleans? People from the city joke that newcomers are people who've put in 15 years or less, and most people have been there through the generations. I'll never bee one of those people, it's too late. But it's never to late to start falling in love with it, start getting to know it, to start helping. A year and a half after the fact, it still needs some work. Find the time and the city will reward you.
UPDATES:
New Orleans Mon Amour, a film by Michael Almereyda for 2008
Bush acknowledges frustrations in New Orleans
March 1, 2007
Get angry again
If there were ever a good reason for blacks to be mad, New Orleans is it.
February 28, 2007
2.09.2007
Ethnomusicologists Against Music As Torture
From the Society for EthnoMusicology (SEM) Website:
Position Statement on Torture (February 2, 2007)
On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.
The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. An international scholarly society founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and its members are devoted to the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts. The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.
The Society for Ethnomusicology
* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.
For further information on the American history and praxis of using music as an instrument of torture, the Society for Ethnomusicology recommends the following article:
Suzanne Cusick, “Music as Torture, Music as Weapon,” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
TMI SEZ: This issue was also very much in the heart of Best Music Writing 2006. Please also read what was our concluding essay, Disco Inferno.
Position Statement on Torture (February 2, 2007)
On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.
The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. An international scholarly society founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and its members are devoted to the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts. The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.
The Society for Ethnomusicology
* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.
For further information on the American history and praxis of using music as an instrument of torture, the Society for Ethnomusicology recommends the following article:
Suzanne Cusick, “Music as Torture, Music as Weapon,” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
TMI SEZ: This issue was also very much in the heart of Best Music Writing 2006. Please also read what was our concluding essay, Disco Inferno.
2.05.2007
Amen break lecture/acetate/youtube meltdown for the chin-strokers
In 2005, I was thrilled to be one-upped on a dance/revolution panel at EMP by Nate Harrison's fantastic conceptual paper on the "Amen" break. I think he went after me, and simply moved the stylus onto an acetate, on which he had recorded his paper. And then he sat there. For those of you who missed this real-time playback lecture can now watch the record spin on YouTube. Sadly, each time you watch youtube, the quality of the video won't degrade slightly, but you never know when some Viacom-type might come and smack down one of his many samples, no matter how fairly-used.
2.03.2007
I just want the boy to be happy
Converging on Pasadena yesterday, today and tomorrow: the legions of Morrissey faithful. I was among them yesterday, properly dressed and a three on the 10 point scale of psychedom for the show, comparatively. Now, mind you, LA's has a well documented fascination with the Moz, (this docu perhaps inspired by the great Klosterman piece anthologized in DC-BMW03 for Spin), so I didn't even bother getting too overdone. Out of my league.
I was a late blooming Smiths fan, coming after my NIN-superlative melodrama days and before my true rebirth into pop-lustre, so what I like/love now would have been red-hot had I had the tunes at the right time. That said, I feel like I needed to be 28 seeing Morrissey and loving it. Any time 10 years earlier and some post-punk fuck you stance would have set my sentiment-o-meter into the barf-red zone (being melodramatic and ANGRY was so much different for me back in the day than melodramatic and depressed, which I would have not copped to). Instead, I stood there wishing I knew the b-sides to songs sung loudly by my neighbors, and felt slightly ashamed when my pulse raced more for obvious tracks (the guilt of only-knowing-singles). Still, there wasn't a wiff of knowingness and exclusion to be had among the largely Mexican-American crowd, who sang and danced together like it was the indie rock prom we all wish we'd had. The beefy dude next to me was alone and shouted "I LOVE YOU" at the top of his lungs, then started taking cell calls. The last time that happened at a show I was at was Bright Eyes, but the crowd there was much less self-assured. Maybe in 23 years they'll surrender.
Morrissey, in my first vision of the man, is a true grotesque. He moves as he sings, in half-time, his whole being devoted to restrained inner monologue with sharp barbs of reality (usually punctuated by a whip of his mic chord). He seemed to me to be in a perpetual state of whithering onstage, and when he made some banter comment about "the last moment of his mortal self" or some such self-reference (...I thank you for buying tickets so early), I had a sudden feeling that maybe he's been decomposing on stage for the last 23 years, slowly - like some existential version of GG Allin threatening not sudden violence but the even more cruel fate of watching someone you love just rot before you in age. In the lowlights he looked like a mechanic and in the highlights, Jay Leno. Either way, this is not the physique of a man who is loved for what he looks or feels like on the outside.
I was constantly mesmerized but I couldn't tell why, other than this snakecharmer half-time thing he does, crooning against the pent up energy of his Hives look a like back up band (there seems to be a shortage of pop punk boy band suits in the warehouse so they had to wear...catering uniforms?!). I spent today listening to his covers, "Cosmic Dancer" and "Moon River" being two poles of last nights show for me - something very glam/Roxy Music about the whole stage show (the sax?) but Sinatra about the vibe. I told my gracious friend (whose plus one I was) that if Las Vegas were run by the Mexican Mob, maybe the Moz would have been Sinatra. Or, maybe Morrissey is the real El Vez? Prince has his own club, as do the Beatles, so maybe Vegas needs its own Morrissey star stage - the most beloved loser's lounge.
I was a late blooming Smiths fan, coming after my NIN-superlative melodrama days and before my true rebirth into pop-lustre, so what I like/love now would have been red-hot had I had the tunes at the right time. That said, I feel like I needed to be 28 seeing Morrissey and loving it. Any time 10 years earlier and some post-punk fuck you stance would have set my sentiment-o-meter into the barf-red zone (being melodramatic and ANGRY was so much different for me back in the day than melodramatic and depressed, which I would have not copped to). Instead, I stood there wishing I knew the b-sides to songs sung loudly by my neighbors, and felt slightly ashamed when my pulse raced more for obvious tracks (the guilt of only-knowing-singles). Still, there wasn't a wiff of knowingness and exclusion to be had among the largely Mexican-American crowd, who sang and danced together like it was the indie rock prom we all wish we'd had. The beefy dude next to me was alone and shouted "I LOVE YOU" at the top of his lungs, then started taking cell calls. The last time that happened at a show I was at was Bright Eyes, but the crowd there was much less self-assured. Maybe in 23 years they'll surrender.
Morrissey, in my first vision of the man, is a true grotesque. He moves as he sings, in half-time, his whole being devoted to restrained inner monologue with sharp barbs of reality (usually punctuated by a whip of his mic chord). He seemed to me to be in a perpetual state of whithering onstage, and when he made some banter comment about "the last moment of his mortal self" or some such self-reference (...I thank you for buying tickets so early), I had a sudden feeling that maybe he's been decomposing on stage for the last 23 years, slowly - like some existential version of GG Allin threatening not sudden violence but the even more cruel fate of watching someone you love just rot before you in age. In the lowlights he looked like a mechanic and in the highlights, Jay Leno. Either way, this is not the physique of a man who is loved for what he looks or feels like on the outside.
I was constantly mesmerized but I couldn't tell why, other than this snakecharmer half-time thing he does, crooning against the pent up energy of his Hives look a like back up band (there seems to be a shortage of pop punk boy band suits in the warehouse so they had to wear...catering uniforms?!). I spent today listening to his covers, "Cosmic Dancer" and "Moon River" being two poles of last nights show for me - something very glam/Roxy Music about the whole stage show (the sax?) but Sinatra about the vibe. I told my gracious friend (whose plus one I was) that if Las Vegas were run by the Mexican Mob, maybe the Moz would have been Sinatra. Or, maybe Morrissey is the real El Vez? Prince has his own club, as do the Beatles, so maybe Vegas needs its own Morrissey star stage - the most beloved loser's lounge.
1.20.2007
party girls
LA interjection:
This article on dance party gangs in LA has been much discussed in my household over the last few days. I find it profoundly disturbing, but I also feel a little hypocritical for my shock, since I know I was carousing at houseparties and raves in high school too. What is different here? One is perhaps an age thing, barely teens (like the Seattle rave murders last year), and another might be the marketing around these girls - less the playful feel-good sexuality of 90s rave days and more explicitly sexual. The flyers look less like high school parties and more like b&t meathead club flyers, advertising the women more than the party atmosphere/experience. Then there's the bartering to holdoff gang violence, which is something my newly LA-brain still can't really comprehend.
On the other side, here's a Mr. Roger's-esque peep into the LA school district's instrument repair shop.
This article on dance party gangs in LA has been much discussed in my household over the last few days. I find it profoundly disturbing, but I also feel a little hypocritical for my shock, since I know I was carousing at houseparties and raves in high school too. What is different here? One is perhaps an age thing, barely teens (like the Seattle rave murders last year), and another might be the marketing around these girls - less the playful feel-good sexuality of 90s rave days and more explicitly sexual. The flyers look less like high school parties and more like b&t meathead club flyers, advertising the women more than the party atmosphere/experience. Then there's the bartering to holdoff gang violence, which is something my newly LA-brain still can't really comprehend.
On the other side, here's a Mr. Roger's-esque peep into the LA school district's instrument repair shop.
1.14.2007
Byrning
Just read Will's piece on David Bryne and wonder if there has ever been a time since beginning of Talking Heads that he WASN'T an influence on up-and-coming bands? It has less to do with his collected works and more with the fact laid so bare at the end of this piece - Byrne has never allowed his celebrity to warp the scale of his ambitions, or rather, his ambitions were likely always bigger than his singular reach, and that is appealing to young musicians (and artists). Byrne is the lovable dilletante.
1.05.2007
jackin' pop
This picture is from the Gibson factory in Memphis, TN - was there a few days ago on my cross-country drive to LA, where I'll be living for the next eight months.
You may have seen my essay for the best album as voted by the Jackin' Pop poll. Check out this NPR story on the end of P&J to see what all the fuss about the JP poll has been this year.
Will post more in the near future, after I unpack.
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