That’s When He Should’ve Reached For His Revolver?

Moby Attacked!

Do Eminem and Russ have alibis?

Seriously, that’s one way to prove that yr hard, eh? Jumping a skinny Christian vegan pacifist with a few of your buddies after he signs some autographs. The mace seems a little over the top, don’t ya think?

Poor guy.

That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate!

Thanks to the nice people on the Pavement mailing list, I’ve been able to correct/fill in the blanks on my Jicks Warsaw setlist. It’s still not complete, so if anyone can email me the corrections, that would be extremely rad.

Special thanks to “Hunter” in particular, who was the first to get the corrections to me, but also delivered the unfortunate news that “Memory Pulls” will most likely not be on Pig Lib, which kinda broke my heart.

Terrible News

Stereolab guitarist/vocalist Mary Hansen has died at age 36, she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle in London. I was just listening to Stereolab for the first time in a long while on the day that she died, thinking about how great her dynamic and chemistry with Laetitia Sadier was, she will definitely be missed. More information is available here and here.

Recommended Song With Brief Explanation

The Last Emperor “Secret Wars part one” – Hip hop MCs do battle with Marvel superheroes. Yes. If you love hip hop and have ever read superhero comics, this is a must. [Thanks to Bio K-9]

To Discard The Life I Once Knew

Apparently, based on Zwan’s first single “Honestly”, Zwan : The Smashing Pumpkins :: The Jicks : Pavement. “Honestly” seamlessly picks up where the final Pumpkins singles left off, and it could easily pass for a late period Pumpkins song, or even something off of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (think “Muzzle” and “Here is No Why”). I’m curious to hear how much this song will represent the first Zwan record, since the few live Zwan songs I’ve bothered to listen to were considerably more dense and prog-ish. Those songs at least gave me some understanding as to why Dave Pajo and Matt Sweeney were suddenly bandmates with Billy Corgan, because this is not at all the kind of song I would associate either of them with.

I do like “Honestly” a lot, but it seems a little too safe and radio friendly. It’s a bit too cynical for me, I would have preferred Billy to come out with a more brash departure from his old band. Of course, perhaps the Zwan record won’t be a departure at all, but more like Malkmus’ first record which was very familiar and a natural progression from the previous Pavement record. I think that for the both of them, breaking up their old bands and starting new ones had less to do with a desire for a drastic artistic change than it had to do with shedding the expectations of their back catalogue and not wanting to play the old hits in concert anymore. Also, the desire to play with new musicians seems like a pretty obvious thing too; though in the case of this Zwan song, I really can’t tell how Pajo, Sweeney, and the girl from that Tool sideproject band fit into this. Corgan’s still with his old Pumpkins drummer and I can’t even begin to speculate as to what parts of that wall-of-guitar sound were performed by Corgan and what wasn’t. That solo is definitely Corgan’s playing, though. I’ve heard variations of that solo in at least 20 Pumpkins songs by now.

Recommended Songs Without Explanations

Stereolab “International Colouring Contest” (specfically the version from ABC Music)

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players “Do You Know What I Mean?” (available here.)

Hot Hot Heat “In Cairo”

Life Without Buildings “New Town”

Norah Jones “Come Away With Me”

Groundhogs “Strange Town”

Liz Phair “Dance of the Seven Veils” (specifically, the live version from Sessions At West 54th available on this site.)

Adaptation

I saw Adaptation yesterday, and it was absolutely amazing. I give it the highest possible recommendation, I urge everyone reading this to see it as soon as it opens in their area. I won’t be writing anything else about the film here, but I will be contributing to this thread on Barbelith about Adaptation, which so far is just myself and Russ going back and forth about it, waiting for more people to join in.

Why Don’t You Shake It Down For Peace And Love?

You can find excellent movie files of Sleater-Kinney’s spirited performance of “Step Aside” on Conan O’Brien here.

Jicks At The Warsaw, December 7th 2002

* FLY

* JO JO’S JACKET

* WATER IN THE SEA – Very prominent drum/guitar groove, but vocal melody offsets it in a weird unexpected way.

* VANESSA FROM QUEENS – another new song, not previously available as a bootleg mp3 to my knowledge. Midtempo pop, can’t remember much more than that.

* ANIMAL MIDNIGHT – another new song, previously unplayed to my knowledge. Vaguely sinister sounding mid-tempo song.

* VAGUE SPACE

* THE OYSTER (aka Crimson Alligator)

* CHURCH ON WHITE

* DARK WAVE – kinda rocking, with a lot of Malkmus “ooh-oohs”.

* NEVER MY LOVE – cover, original by The Association.

* RAMP OF DEATH – Kinda went right by me in a mid-tempo blur. I didn’t know this one either.

* SHEETS – Another new song, very rocking, one of the best new ones. Some great Malkmus vocals on this one.

* WITCH MOUNTAIN RIDGE (Listed as “prog” on the setlist. may actually be “News From Noisewhere”) – This is song #5 from the Buenos Aires show, the one that starts off “calm me down from new frustration”. I really love this song, I was very happy to hear it.

* JENNY AND THE ESS-DOG

encore:

*US – very nice version, Malkmus played seated for this and the next song. Only SM and John Moen sing on this, Joanna and Mike didn’t join in.

*THIRD RATE ROMANCE – Amazing Rhythm Aces cover, thank you to Hunter. I’m very disappointed that this isn’t an SM original.

*EAGLE ROCK – Memphis Slim cover. Joanna didn’t know it. Malkmus just told her to play mostly A and a “little bit of E”.

*ONE PERCENT OF ONE

I’ll update this setlist once I know what songs were what once I have a copy of Pig Lib. I was very surprised to hear so many new new songs, because I was hyped up to see a lot of the older new songs. I’m afraid that Malkmus may have ditched those songs, which is a real shame because a lot of those songs are better than the less interesting newer songs played last night. I would hate to see “Asp Alert” and “Memory Pulls Me Out Again” be relegated to obscurity, they’re just way too good. I was happy that they played “Jo Jo’s Jacket” and “Vague Space”, as those are my two favorites from the previous record. I was vaguely surprised that no Pavement songs were played this time, given that “In The Mouth A Desert” and “Here” had appeared in some other recent setlists. The performance of “The Oyster” was the highlight of the show for me, especially the newly added extra-long freakout section at the end. Surprisingly, not many of the lyrics to this song or “1% of 1” have been made, though the “Chicago second class, not freight” verse seems to have officially overtaken the “Bennie & The Jets, Eltons wants that early in the set” verse that I prefer in “The Oyster”.

There were waaaaaay too many people with digi-cams at this show.

A Man’s Destiny Is The Mother Of His Own Invention, And His Alone

Christopher Moltisanti on leaving rehab. (Caution: very minor Sopranos spoilers)

“Never Be Influenced By Shallow-Minded Creeps”

Here is a nice little interview with Lance Bangs about Slow Century, via Tim O Thompson. Also thanks to Tim for pointing me in the direction of this very cute letter from Bob Nastanovich to a fan, circa late 1996.

Two-Dimensional Fathers and Seductive Pin-Striped Foreskins

Extracts from the shortlist for the Literary Review Bad Sex Prize 2002 Oh! Chairman Mao!

Recommended Songs Without Explanations

Yellow Note Vs. Pukka “Naked, Drunk, and Horny”

Scissor Sisters “Electrobix”

The Clash “Train In Vain” (live version from Chaos In New York bootleg)

Zoot Woman “Nobody Knows”

Guided By Voices “Beg For A Wheelbarrow”

Mr. X and Mr. Z “Drink Old Gold”

L’Trimm “We Can Rock The Beat”

Har Mar Superstar “EZ Pass”

Sonic Youth “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style”

Cat Power “Good Woman”

Wilco “Cars Can’t Escape”

He Targets The Fans That You Wish You Didn’t Have

Something that you should know about me is that I’m exactly the kind of guy who thinks this MC Paul Barman lyric is brilliant:

Have I made a mockery of a culture like a Choco-Taco? / Was I to rap as France was to Morocco? / Was I colon rap colon colon France colon Morocco?

I’m a sucker for nerdy punctuation jokes, and Barman just can’t stop himself. That line is from “Old Paul”, which could very well be the most sincerely self-deprecating hip hop song of all time. While on other songs, Barman’s self-deprecating humor is more along the lines of Conan O’Brien’s over-the-top selfloathing, on “Old Paul” it really sounds like Barman is seriously considering his place in hip hop, and makes a strong case for his bravery in the face of overwhelming rejection and/or dismissal from nearly everyone. At any rate, it’s excellent pop with a great chorus; and I find it unfortunate that so many people hate this guy when guys like Ja Rule with half as much talent get loads of inexplicable praise.

Solaris

When I saw Solaris over the weekend, I couldn’t stop thinking about a comment made by Steve Buscemi in his directory’s commentary for the Sopranos episode “Pine Barrens”, which I had seen earlier in the week. Buscemi was talking about how much he admired his director of photography on the episode, and how he thinks that the best camera work does not call attention to itself, that the viewer becomes so lost in the story that the last thing on their mind are the technical decisions and cleverness of the photographer and editors. I think that based on Solaris, as well as pretty much everything else I’ve ever seen by Steven Soderbergh aside from Erin Brockovitch, it’s probably safe to say that Soderbergh does not share this opinion.

Virtually every scene in Solaris begs the viewer to acknowledge how beautiful, clever, or well-shot the images are, to the point that the plot seemed besides the point. I know that I had almost no investment in the story, and I’m not sure if it’s really the fault of the story itself since I’ve never seen the original film or read the source novel. At my most cynical, I wonder if Soderbergh chose to make Solaris not so much because he cared about the story, but that to film the story it would require a number of directorial challenges and that the general philosophical tone would allow audiences to forgive several gratuitous and selfconciously ‘arty’ photographic decisions. The film looks and feels as though Soderbergh is checking off a to-do list of film geek and photo techy things that he wanted to fit into a movie, as if he’s thinking “2001 homage – check. Several scenes in which we linger the camera in tight close-up on one actor for the duration of a conversation – check. Another 2001 homage – check…” In many ways, Solaris felt more like a math problem being solved on screen than a genuine moving story, much less one that is meant to be somewhat romantic and intellectually stimulating.

It’s not George Clooney’s fault, though. The guy gives a fairly decent performance, given what he has to work with. He’s a likeable screen presence, and he doesn’t overact, much unlike his tremendously irritating leading lady, Natascha McElhone. McElhone grates on me in many ways which are obvious (poor acting and line reading, a mysteriously fluctuating accent, a tendency to flail about a bit too much) but also in ways that I’m not sure I can verbalize. Something about her is just so wrong, I can’t help but be repelled by her. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in which an actress bothered me as much as she does – if I were rating this film on a star system, I think that I would take off a star simply for the fact that she was cast in it. She’s just that awful.

It’s probably best for people to avoid Soderbergh’s Solaris unless they have a genuine interest in Soderbergh as a filmmaker, or have already seen and/or read the previous incarnations of the story. It’s not without redeeming qualities — the story may not have done much for me, but it’s not awful; and as gratuitous as many of Soderbergh’s shots may be, they are still quite beautiful and much of it would work well as still photography. Regardless of that, the faults of this film are too distracting and ultimately make this film a passable curiosity.

Blue Moon In Your Eyes

Jesus Christ – I leave for a couple days, and I return to find that my daily traffic has spiked due to about 50+ people arriving here looking for “Sopranos spoilers”, as if I have any better idea of what to expect than they do. Last night’s episode was amazing though, and it’s good to see that I’m not alone in anxiously awaiting next week’s finale. I’m fearing the worst, personally – my predictions are that Carmella will file for divorce, Paulie will die, Carmine will be killed, Junior will go to jail, and it will all be pretty much the beginning of the end for Tony. Things will be extremely dire after next week, setting up the final act of the story next season.

The Shape Of Things That Finally Come

Thank you to Sara for passing this along to me:

I was looking at your web page and saw that you wanted to know what Stewart

Lupton from Jonathan Fire Eater was up to? He is in a new band called Child

Ballads. They are based in Washington DC and are just starting to play shows.

You should keep your eyes open for them!

Killer Tunes Bubblegum Disaster

Sonic Youth put on a typically great show last night at Irving Plaza. My only complaint is that I would’ve preferred that they had played more than two songs that weren’t played at the Central Park gig, and that Kim didn’t dominate the setlist with eight songs to Thurston’s five and Lee’s two. Still, I can’t complain because they did play the song I was most hoping to hear, “Skip Tracer”, and it’s no problem to me to get to see them play “Candle” and “Shadow Of A Doubt” again. Though I think the Central Park show was more exciting and was a slightly better performance; the intimacy of Irving Plaza compared to Summerstage really changed the tone of the show and I think the audience had more fun overall. There was a lot more moshing, stage diving, and crowd surfing than I’m normally used to, but it was never out of hand. It’s weird, the most intense the crowd got all night was for “Kissability”, which I’d never really thought of as a popular Sonic Youth song. For me, I’d say the highlights of the show were “Skip Tracer”, the ending of “Radical Adults…”, the particularly tense reading of “Shadow Of A Doubt”, and the finale of “Kool Thing” with Kim’s rant about cd prices and the record industry. “Plastic Sun” was a lot of fun, too.

The Liars opened up, and they were extremely good. I had their record, but very seldom listened to it besides the first two songs, but their set last night was so perfect from start to finish that I’m now convinced that they are a great band. I’m going to have to pull out the album later on – I can’t believe I didn’t catch on to them earlier. Granted, at least half of their set were new and unreleased songs, so I think that perhaps much of what I was responding to were those songs and their intensity of performance. I’m definitely looking foward to that next album, and seeing them live again.

Sonic Youth’s setlist, 11/29/02:

Bull In the Heather / The Empty Page / Rain On Tin / Skip Tracer / Kissability / Candle / Plastic Sun / Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style / Shadow Of A Doubt / Karenology / Drunken Butterfly / Sympathy For The Strawberry // Disconnection Notice / Making The Nature Scene /// Kool Thing

Moving Backwards In Time

David Rees goes to town on Henry Kissinger’s recent appointment with hilarious results.

I Accept, I Do Decline!

There’s an excellent high-sound-quality Pavement show available for download here. It’s the band’s 1997 Bizarre Festival set, which was previously available in trading circles on video from German television. Those who own the Slow Century DVD would recognize “The Hexx” from this show as being the one that is included in its entirety in the outtakes section of the documentary. It’s one of my favorite Pavement shows that I’ve heard, and it includes very inspired versions of “Grave Architecture”, “Kennel District”, and “FIN.” I highly recommend downloading it while this guy has it up.

Pardon My French

Matador a un MP3 de bibliothèque de porc, et il s’appelle “nous”! Fluxblog au Francais.

Unquestionably The Most Baffling Search Ever Leading To This Blog:

“Look At This Dining Room, Ghostface.”

Dude, You’ll Never Understand The Malleable Hammer!

Scroll down to the second consumer review. How’s this for condescending elitism?

i recently saw this title on display at a barnes and noble or borders, or one of those stores, and you really just have to appreciate the irony implicit in all of that, of a band like this appealing to more of a pop-culture audience, who probably won’t understand the full implications of the liner notes, the malleable hammer with the words “hope” inscribed on it, or any of the aforementioned wind fueling the sailing of the ship on the sea of doom, or even the name of the band, really

I mean, really. Because, y’know, people who shop at book stores are such dumb illiterates, right? Why is it ironic that a store which stocks many of the books and periodicals that have either inspired or echoed Godspeed You Black Emperor’s political views would also carry their album? Let’s be honest, this is a self-conciously arty instrumental record which is great for background music while you read books or clean the house. Bookstores that cater to yuppie tastes are pretty much the best place on earth for selling Godspeed records. And so what? If you like the record so much, isn’t it better that more people have access and exposure to it?

If this jackass has such a problem with chain bookstores, then why’s he shopping there? I’ll tell you why. Because this guy lists his location as being in Albany, which I can tell you from experience is not a city big on bookstores. There’s a lot of places all over where there aren’t places to buy books and records, much less ones that appeal to a small hipster/intellectual audience. While it’s true that the world would be a better place if more people frequented smaller, independently owned shops, I think that we should be grateful that in some places there are any bookstores at all.

This guy can be as smug as he wants; insult as many people’s intelligence as he sees fit; but when it comes down to it, at least half of the copies of Yanqui U.X.O. that’s been sold in Barnes & Noble and Borders has likely been sold to a person just as pretentious and self-satisfied as himself. I’d bet that nearly every one of them, on some level, was thinking “Ha! As if anyone else here would understand this! I’m sure the cashier doesn’t even know what this is! How transgressive and esoteric! Oh, the irony implicit in me buying this album here!” when they paid at the register. Then they go home and listen to the record, thinking about how great they are for understanding the “implications” of the liner notes, things that so few others could possibly grasp. And they can all thank Barnes & Noble or Borders for supplying them with that refreshing feeling of detached superiority.

This Is Clearly My Lucky Day

I never thought it would happen – but The Gorch is back!

Chatting Up A Panda In A Bar

Psst. Spread the word – Matador has an MP3 from Pig Lib, and it’s called “Us”. It’s quite good, but quite different most everything else Malkmus has ever done. It’s fairly mellow jangle-rock with three-way vocal harmonies, not that far off from what Wilco were doing on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It also reminds me a lot of the Jicks’ cover of the Fairport Convention’s “Tale In Hard Time”, or “Folk Jam” off of Terror Twilight. It’s not Malkmus’ best work, but it’s a worthwhile experiment, I’d say. It’s funny; in its own way, it’s one of the most experimental and brave songs of Malkmus’ career, and that’s almost entirely to do with how blatantly uncool and relatively conventional it is. “Us” sounds very relaxed and confident to me, mature in all the best senses of the word. Malkmus sounds very content with himself, and where he is in his career now.

To those people who may be put off by “Us”: if the other new songs that Malkmus had been playing live are anything to go on (and to a certain extent, they are – most of them are confirmed as songs that will be on Pig Lib), this song is not very indicative of what the other songs will sound like. So don’t get too worried or alienated by this song, but please – if you’re put off by it at first, keep with it. I like it more and more every time I hear it, it’s a definite grower. I can’t wait to hear how “The Oyster”, “Animal Midnight”, “One Percent Of One” et al turned out.

Isn’t The Whole Thing Just Clever As All Hell?!

This is just repulsive. First, I really can’t stand it when personal diatribes better suited to blog entries or message board rants are sold off as legitimate music journalism. It’s a sickening lack of professionalism, there’s nothing resembling intelligent commentary in this Matos piece, it’s nothing more than undiluted bile and misdirected anger. Now, it’s fine to express these things, to get them off of one’s chest – but to pass this off as a piece of journalism is disgusting. It reveals a serious dearth of talent and ideas, and offers nothing more to the reader than cheap shock. It’s reactionary bullshit designed to elicit angry letters-to-the-editor. What bothers me even more is that Matos presumes to know Chan Marshall, to understand her motivations, when it seems entirely plausible that he’s doing little more than projecting his own odious qualities onto her in some kind of sideways autocritique. Surely this statement can be taken with a probable “pot-kettle-black” grain of salt, but you know what? This is a blog entry. I don’t think blogs are subject to the same level of journalistic standards that I believe published journalism should be held up to. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I really do think that arts and entertainment journalism should be written with the same seriousness and professionalism as hard news and analysis.

At any rate, it’s insulting and just yet another piece of hack music ‘criticism’ that’s being pushed on us by crap magazines and weeklies who fancy themselves rebellious bad boys; the journalistic equivalent of small-market shock jocks and their cookie-cutter ‘zoo crews’. Every one of these guys fancies themselves the next Lester Bangs or Robert Christgau the same way the shock jocks delude themselves into thinking they’re the new Howard Stern. It’s very depressing.

The Broccoli Of Authenticity

If you haven’t read it yet, last week’s New York Times Magazine had a feature-length article about Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst which has to be the most appallingly awful piece of journalism I’ve ever seen published by the Times. Seriously, we’re talking about a sub-Pitchfork level of writing; full of baffling purple prose, a total lack of objectivity, and piss-poor fact checking. It’s so dreadful, that it crosses over into the realm of comedy at some points.

The most unintentionally hilarious bit comes from a fan who explains his powerful reaction to Oberst’s music:

”I’ve never seen anyone in music be so tormented,” Oda said. ”The song about the coughing, shaking fit on the bathroom floor — I don’t know if I’m sounding teenaged, but when you are drunk and passed out on your bathroom floor and screaming out loud and no one can hear you because your apartment’s lonely and cold, it’s the perfect music.”

That quote is almost too good to be true – it seems almost like something out of a Christopher Guest movie.

Even more funny is Analog Roam’s commentary about the article, particularly the bit in which he wonders how Oberst and Dylan would rate in bed by the standards of the article’s writer:

So tell us, Pagan Kennedy — how do you think they would compare in the sack? Oh, I know. Dylan would be too rough. He wouldn’t cover you in rose petals first. He wouldn’t care enough about your feeeeelings. But Connor Oberst — now there’s a lover. So shy. So sensitive. He would weep before, during, and after the act, his orgasm culminating in a great pained sob and an animal bleat. How hot is that?

He Will Kill For You

Cat Power’s You Are Free is not a perfect album. There’s maybe three or four too many songs, about five of them sound about the same and drone on a bit, but that doesn’t matter too much. There are eight songs on this record which are either just jaw-droppingly beautiful, or otherwise brilliant. For the most part, I’m not sure if I can put my thoughts about those songs into coherant words just yet, because like the best of Cat Power’s previous material (or the best of music, in general), it’s all about the feeling. It’s abstract, it’s nonlinear, it’s pure emotion. It’s the whole “dancing about architecture” thing, and I’m not going to frustrate myself by trying to give this any kind of proper review. It’s still too early for me anyway – I don’t think I ever fully understood what power Moon Pix had over me til maybe a year after I’d bought a copy.

Jody Beth Rosen did write a very smart and interesting observation about the song “He War” the other day, and I think she’s pretty much on target there. The more I hear that song, the more I realize that it reminds me a lot of “Get Up” by Sleater-Kinney in terms of structure and feeling, which is a great thing since Sleater-Kinney have apparently abandoned that kind of song in spite of the fact that The Hot Rock is easily their finest record.

Half Puff Daddy, Half Thomas Edison

By all means, check out the new Friends Of Tom website, the only web page for the ‘fun club’ of The Best Show On WFMU with Tom Scharpling. The show itself is keeping up the level of quality reestablished last week by bringing back Cory from Mother 13 AND Radio Hut in this past Tuesday’s episode. Later on in the episode, Tom ‘brings it’ by becoming Doc Shock, WFMU’s first shock jock. Of course, this is just another version of The Best Show EXTREME, but I don’t mind – I’d rather that the show be funny recycling older characters and schticks than limp along nearly devoid of humor as it had for the past few months.

More From The Book Of Changes

Here’s some more interesting quotes taken from interviews conducted by Kristine McKenna.

“My big disappointment in life was realizing there aren’t that many gifted, brilliant people. When I first came to New York and went to screenings, I’d see these well dressed, handsome people, and I’d think, “My god, they must know so much.” Then, when I’d attach names to those people I’d repeatedly find myself thinking “That’s the schmuck who writes that awful stuff!” When I was a kid I thought there were lots of brilliant people who wrote dull stuff because they were corrupt, and it took me a long time to realize that most of them just couldn’t write much better. God knows there are a lot of them who are corrupt and write what editors and advertisers want them to write, but there are also a great many who can’t do better.”

– Pauline Kael, 1982

“A message is a load of crap. I don’t know what I want to say to people. I get ideas and I want to put them on film because they thrill me. You may say that people look for meaning in everything, but they don’t. They’ve got life going on around them and they don’t look for meaning there, yet they expect to find meaning when they go to a movie. I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.”

– David Lynch, 1986 (on the set of ‘Blue Velvet’)

What was the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your life?

“But I haven’t trusted that. And in overcoming that disbelief and realizing that I am attractive, I’ve also come to sympathize with people who are born physically beautiful and must struggle to achieve a sense of “inner beauty”, to use an extremely hackneyed phrase. When I finally accepted that I had to work, entertain, be a goon, draw blood, and bare my soul to get people’s attention, I suddenly became aware of an ability to judge other people’s true worth. It was as if I’d been using the wrong terms of reference for myself, and thereby, for everyone else as well. I am truly able to say with my hand on my heart that I am now able to look at beautiful women without being confused about their value. That makes me happy, because my wife happens to be beautiful, and I’ve finally realized that that’s just a lucky break for her. What’s lucky for me is that I’m now able to look past that and see the great person that she is. My illusion about physical beauty was a huge obstacle and it was almost Freudian in character, because it was locked in the way I idealized my mother when I was a child. I’ve been able to overcome it with the help of therapy.”

-Pete Townshend, 1986

Eno On Originality

Here’s a great quote from an interview with Brian Eno, taken from The Book Of Changes by Kristine McKenna:

Why is the notion of originality so valued in the creative arena?

It’s a red herring, the originality thing. People are original all the time, and some people choose to regard it as important, while others dismiss it as an aberration. One of the things that’s interesting about nearly all ethnic music is that it doesn’t pivot on the idea of newness. In raggae, for instance, you hear the same riffs year after year in a shifting context. The idea there is to use a thing for as long as it still means something. The idea in the high culture of the west is to drop something as soon as you can no longer claim it as only yours. As soon as other people are onto it you have to drop it and go elsewhere, and that’s such a stupidly childish attitude.

I’m Not That Hot New Chick

I highly recommend getting a copy of the new Cat Power song being offered up on the Matador MP3 page. It’s got an awkward title, “He War”, but it’s a great little song in the vein of “Cross Bones Style” or “Nude As The News”, ie a full band electric arrangement, vaguely rocking. I especially like the piano, and the lead guitar bit just before the song ends. It sort of reminds me of some of the Barbara Manning songs that I like, specifically “Mark E. Smith and Brix” from Lately I Keep Scissors.

The House Music Will Blare And Turn Your Ears Into A Medicinal Jelly

A big public ‘Thank You!’ to Tim O Thompson for the heads up about the Stephen Malkmus gig at the Warsaw on December 7th. That may have slipped right by me were it not for him noting it on his blog, so God bless him. Please note that Ticketmaster does not have tickets yet (maybe they won’t, I don’t know how this is), but you can order them through Insound, with a slightly more reasonable service charge than you’d have to shell out were you purchasing them from Ticketmaster. I’m obviously quite psyched to be seeing my (de facto) favorite band again, but I’m sort of annoyed that I have to see Endless Boogie open – I’ve seen them as a warm up act for the Jicks and GBV before, and they’re fucking terrible. They play really bad bar rock, and I swear to you, you can sing “Taking Care Of Business” over every song they’ve got. Yuck.