Summer(y)’s here and the time is right. Last calendar year, "Work It" aside, was a rather lackluster one for dance music; even folks who should have known better got caught up with that soulless electroclash and forgot about the funk. I’m happy to announce that things are different in 2003. Beyond the full-scale synthpop revival we seem to be experiencing (qv. recent reviews in this pages of Erlend Øye, Postal Service, etc.), several post-everything trends have been emerging to right past wrongs and point in exciting new directions. Even just the last few weeks have seen a handful of stunning dance-oriented releases from around the globe, demonstrating that dance is as much a global phenomenon as ever. Here’s what’s been blasting from my stereo, and why I’ve been keeping my floor clean this semester:

The Bug: Pressure
(Tigerbeat6)
If the mp3 playlists of Paces DJs are any indication, I’d say Jamaican riddims and dub flava are succeeding banghra as clubpop culture’s exotica-flirtation-du-jour. Now, I don’t know from dancehall, but if the customarily glitch-oriented cats at Tigerbeat have perked their ears up at the Bug it’s safe to assume there’s something gleaky going on here. Indeed, the transatlantic producer breathes electro-tinged life into a genre I’ve always found intriguing but a tad too monotonous. This is helped by a great diversity of tempos, structural approaches, and guest vocalists (Dominican, Viennese, Trinidadian…), though individual tracks tend to pound one monolithic groove into the ground; true to the genre and the base needs of dancefloors everywhere. And though a couple of mellower, almost melodic cuts provide a welcome change of pace, the clear standouts here the roughest, nastiest bass-bin thumpers.

Various Artists: Digital Disco
(Force Tracks)
The genre that until recently dared not speak its name, having spent well over a decade thinly disguised as house, emerges to reclaim the free-spirited soul it lost along the way and revel in the sheen of a sleek new production ethos. "Micro-house," as they’re calling it, denotes less a specific sound than a painstaking attention to sonic detail that makes the stuff just gleam; especially welcome in a genre mired to death in a swamp of indelicate, monotous 12" sides. Force Tracks, the German label responsible for many of the nascent style’s highlights, offers this flagship compilation of smooth/edgy glitch-popping funk-outs, horn-fueled throwback diva jams, and pulsating filtered vocoder anthems (don’t worry: taste theory has been debunked.) Despite the variety, there is real cohesion here, and a real sense of purpose; a group of producers around the globe with a shared vision for the future of dance.

Burnt Friedman and the Nu Du Players: Can’t Cool
(EFA)
Impossibly stylistically-intermingled and constantly self-reinventing, this is a bizarre album that occupies (but is not limited to) a territory in between the two discs discussed above: Jamaican-inflected but truly international collaborative effort (at least four continents are represented) spearheaded by an alias-crazy electro-head down with the German techno elite. The press release categorizes it as "folk-funk reggae soul hybrid," but even that doesn’t capture it all. Truthfully, much of this is too laid back for dancing, though those influences never disappear completely, and there are at least a couple of funk jams worthy of a globetrottin’ Sly Stone. It’s clearly an experimental record, and the results are sometimes breathtaking, sometimes merely curious – and unfortunately, none of it lives up to the stellar first cut, "Fuck Back," a slab of pitch-perfect micro-house, subtle but unbearably funky stop-start building up into layers of horn skronks and lithe guitars.

The Gotan Project: La Revancha del Tango
(XL Recordings)
Revancha means revenge, and while the emotional nabe of this record is anything but hot-tempered, it’s amusing to think of this as the vindication of a genre too long ignored in the world dance scene. Traditional tango instrumentation – sinuous bandoneon, swirls of Spanish guitar, violin stabs – combined with electronica – in this case, danceable "down-tempo" sometimes straying into sophisticated house territory – seems like such a natural pairing; it’s hard to imagine it hasn’t happened before. Or perhaps we just haven’t heard it: after all, there is serious potential here for the worst sort of hackneyed, uninspired lounge-exotica. Thankfully, the Paris-based project sidestep these concerns to fashion an album both elegant and suitably sensuous, but never glossed-over or sentimentalized. The beats, consistently creative and enjoyably organic (thanks in part to substantial live drums and percussion) never overpower the tango elements, which in turn are more fully realized than a mere novelty. And bonus remixes, by everyone from Peter Kruder (of K&D) to Antipop Consortium suggest a range of possibilities future directions for techno-tango encounters.

i watched the sun set lovely from a westerly lang practice room as i (beet)ho(ve)ned between tap'n'terp. and now it's coming up and the sky is streaked pink and perp just like the dot allison cd i picked up at the wsrn prefrosh giveaway friday. i'm listening to the 6ths because i quoted them in my squib. oh, the squib is done, 10 pages not 7 as you might have guessed. and i think it's not half bad. probably need to reproofread in a few hours.

i haven't really been tired, and my nose is mostly cooperative. but i'm going to give my eyes a well-deserved rest for a few hours now, before attending to the tasks of tuesday.

one day it'll happen
one day it'll all come true

did i tell you my life is essentially perfect? listen, i wasn't joking. it's not time right now for me to tell you about my fabulous weekend, or even about today. okay, fine, today: the most beautiful one yet? i tell you, worth courtyard is at least five times prettier today than yesterday. the trees flower quite suddenly. new venues: french moved to the amphitheatre for us to shout hastily memorized chausettes lines ("du liquide pancreatique!" "frottez-moi le dos!"), and bio convened in the spankin' new lecture hall, which is just too nice a space (if you ask me) to be wasted on science lectures. well, i'm sure they'll show films there too. lunch/w'stock interview with elena was great, radio was good too, with special guest and many happy returns. i got, among others, a new first cd (aa before ac) for the first time since the acid mothers temple superseded ryan adams last fall. i got a voicemail from yale evelev, which is doubly exciting. i helped becca assemble an absolutely great picnic dinner co-op featuring cold salads i like(d) and beer in a wine jug. tap class is always great, as is practicing. and terpsichore made me want to get right up on the stage and dance some more. i inched closer to completion of the trio (i'm at viiº/V7, poised for a cadence) and finished writing four snappy reviews, which will go up here shortly.

just about the only thing that isn't making me happy right now is a pestersome sniffle and drip plaguing my face. i blame it on the aftereffects of a day in deadface (which i'll write about soon), not on some abstract springy allergy. (you'd think i've been alive long enough to identify what gives me these occasional allergies, not that i could avoid it. but no. some particles in the air, i presume.)

it's been a full day, and i've been willfully not writing (not neglecting, not avoiding, just not doing) the 7-10 page semantics squib that's due tomorrow. i don't know how much, but certainly the fact that it's not even called a paper is helping me to not take it too seriously. no, i'm happy about the prospect of now writing it too, staying up maybe even all night to get that looby overexposed allnighterhangover which i like but don't do often at all ("night is fluid into morning," i once wrote it.) if not for the sickish, i'd been even more happy about it.

i'm going down to the crum for another bonfire now. then i'll come back and write it. don't worry.

the famous person wears the same size waterskis as me
she's got three cars as many years i've lived in this city
her hair is blond and mine is browne they both start with a "b"
but whenthephone insideherib cageringsitsnot for me

drugstore : baby don’t hurt yourself
daedelus : girls [nstrmntl]
[outkast : the whole world (instrumental)]
thermals : no culture icons
com.a : mix rudegal
corey harris : downhome sophisticate

lilys : accepting applications at university

yuri lane! : live in the studio

hrvatski : vatstep dsp
gotan project : queremos paz
soft pink truth : make up
magnétophone : oh darlin’
burnt friedman : fuck back
lambchop : d. scott parsley
mouse on mars : gocard
kronos quartet : nuevo
the new pornographers : chump change

gary lucas : old dreams
eminem : any man
uri caine/bedrock : skins
the books : motherless bastard
styrofoam : forever, you said forever
fruit bats : a bit of wind
the bug : beats, bombs, bass, weapons
lambchop : up with people (zero 7 remix)
super furry animals : it’s not the end of the world?

walking home last night my socks felt alien to my feet. i could feel each of my toes pushing and clamming against them. my shoes and socks were tingly. maybe compared to the dead exhaustedness of my body, they were relatively alive. two-tone blue socks that make me think of the lilys album cover. i wonder if they'll play socs hip tonight.

yesterday was berry-shirt time, vibrant and lusty, though a sour note early as i had to battle with sharples before lunch. suddenly i found myself playing the beethoven about twice as fast and more accurately than i had before, as though the benefit of slower practice burst into fruition all at once and without my meaning it to, lightning trills and runs spiriting out of my fingertips in a way i couldn't fully comprehend, and i had to keep looping again and again in case it was a fluke and would go away if i stopped playing. tony said a funny thing the other day: "there's a special place in hell reserved for people who confuse tonics and dominants, and i think i'll be seeing you there."

by the end of it (long day with many things) i was spent spent. bluesy zydeco accordioning takes more arm strength than i realized to keep it up for more than a little while. and it took a ridiculous amount of time to find bryn mawr, no thanks to the two different people who gave us blatantly false directions which not only contradicted each other but sent us in entirely the wrong direction. at least i was there in time to shake tim rutilli's hand, and for brokeback to trick two fluries into buying their album instead.

i've got to call jeff at spinART back now, though maybe i'll try luaka bop again first. and read some more of that racy deleuze.

it came out magical
out from blown speakers

in the institutional identificationizing dept., i've been confused and amused by the amazon banner ads that show up on reminced sometimes. it seems like they must be drawing on some info collected about me, somehow refunneled from my purchasing/wishlisting habits through my ip address or whatever - i don't really understand how that works, but i'm not surprised it's possible. because they're suggesting i buy fairly obscure stuff that i'd be interested in (at least, if i didn't already own it) - mùm and joe jackson for instance (mùm has been on my wishlist for a long time, though i don't remember ever ordering any joe online.) but then, on the same banner, they're also flogging the new celine dion. which is quite amusing. and sometime they come with completely random stuff ("the man'n'bag"?), so i'm confused about why it would be so relevant sometimes and not others. do you guys see eerily you-appropriate stuff on those banner ads?

can i make it any more obvious?

happy birthday, mom! and happy earthday, glom! and joel too, happy! check your mail peeps (oh, that reminds me.) it's a good night. i wrote a paper too long and i'll probably want to revise it tomorrow morning, but i think it's interesting, and it was a relaxing process. don't worry about the government, iteotwawki & i feel fine, why that doesn't scare me; that kind of thing. identification vs. individualization.

rob gets high and wants to know about starsailor and limp bizkit and gy!be all in one breath. i could only help him with the third; lysflath (lvsfcath?) makes for good paper writing music. yuka and yoshimi are ridiculous. got tickets for jjidasoip on friday. maybe that will make up for not seeing aywkubttod last week.

imna mericana quarium drinker
alkaseltzin down the avuhnoo

does anybody want to go see don delillo speak at the free library tomorrow at 8? i mean it's probably a bad idea for me too but it sounds like fun. i miss rae - she would be so down with this. and why doesn't she answer my e-mail?

over 40 000 000 served and that's a record …

and are we are we are we are we are facing
the end of all of all the drugs we're lacing?

missing a class or two every now or then is a good way to remember that they weren't all that important to begin with. (and missing a class that you're auditing, on a day they're having a quiz, is so completely benign.) there are good things to miss classes for. it doesn't seem like i got much sleep last night, i guess because it was in fits and starts. but it must have been mostly fits, because i'm finely rested now.

monday was a low; craziness and doubt, boring radio as you can see below, frantically trying to fax out my resumé but even that takes frustratingly long. and sac = double suc. all of this stuff to get done, and there's really only one thing i feel like doing. no, not that. no, i don't know what myself. but it's gotten better - sax and piano boogie jazz jam monday night with complimentary milkshake and onioned plaintains, buzzy contact free-for-all, and meals with people. music. i'm only writing here now for the sake of writing here, so i'll stop. but life are good.

buckle up and endure now, sweet thing

[daedelus : girls (nstrmntl)]
lilys : precollection
lilys : melusina
lilys : catherine (let a positive stream)
flaming lips : can’t get you out of my head (p)
call and response : i know you want me

flaming lips : the strange design of conscience (p)
cex : stamina
cex : see ya never, sike
erlend øye : [hidden track]
saint etienne : soft like me

circulatory system : now
circulatory system : a peek
circulatory system : fingers
circulatory system : days to come (in photographs)
circulatory system : symbols and maps
tullycraft : falling out of love with you
tullycraft : heroes and villians

essex green : whetherman
fruit bats : when u love somebody
wrens : yellow number three
wrens : built in girls
wrens : surprise, honeycomb
wrens : rest your head
certainly, sir : secret stone

new pornographers : the new face of zero and one
lilys : the lost victory

i'm confused about why i'm so bummed out right now - but it will pass. can you believe there are only two more weeks of school? it doesn't seem plausible. or good. i wish i knew what i was going to do this summer. oh dear.

classes drag on (friday: too tired to say anything to contradict ill-informed generalizations about 'rappeurs americains'; optimality foraging theory in biology and practice in sharples; horror films in fct and listening to people disparage jvb as we made ours) but don't really seem to be approaching a conclusion. it's sort of disillusioning when courses just stop. outside it's hot and cold. we seem to be waiting for something. sitting and hating on the steps between 2nd and 3rd parrish. last night was good though. two shooting stars, only one of which i saw. soon i was too tired to even mumble coherently, and that's a comfortable way to be as long as there's a bed involved.

by the way, if you're wondering, i'm out of assassins. the death squad (whatever) got me while i was shooting, or rather while i was playing scrabble waiting for the set dressers and tech people to be ready to shoot. probably could have avoided them if we'd finished shooting on time and i could go home and lock my door. probably (no, definitely) could have got my target if i hadn't stopped to put my bag down to chase him, or if i hadn't slipped on the wet grass while i was chasing him, or if parrish 1st steps hadn't been declared safe (bogus i think and most agree.) eh, it's good i got out when i did, because i was about ready to start playing seriously. i made it to the last five. best, it barely interfered with my life at all. i never made a plan, it was purely defensive and fortuitous playing. did you know, in five semesters, i've only made three kills.

also, 25th hour is a strange and perhaps bad movie.

your sexual politics have got me all in a muddle
we are joined in the ideological cuddle

sunny sunday again. happy easter, and happy four-twenty i guess if you like (i could smoke today i suppose but nah i won't). i shant be upholding my two-year easter-at-the-barnes tradition. ester suggests googling all your kisses; i'm doing her one better and inviting them to worthstock (like her, i have an even ten.) i just performed excision surgery on my cd player, which is not designed for such things to happen easily. lots to do, of course, but first this, as promised. then brunch. then we'll see about the rest.

the north star is charming, if (like chang street, which the direx told us to take to the parking lot) a little oddly shaped. partly because the center of the floor is sunken a couple feet, the stage is extremely high (chest height) which i normally don't like. the balcony extends to the edge of the stage, so we could look down on heaps of equipment and percussion toys, which seemed like far too many for cex or postal.

indeed, we were there lucky early enough for the unannounced opener, who reminded me of a kinder gentler enon or a more organic p.s. cabasas, torpedo, claves, two chicksingers, rolands, guy with boston area code t-shirt who told us the name of every song. (we learned that synthpop frontmen are awkward, unassuming, painfully cute.) i liked them enough to buy their "single" (same number of tracks and $1 more than the p.s. "ep") and i'm glad i did.

there was space for that set but then a little crush up to the front, pushing me up close enough to hear ryan singing 'carrot rope' to himself, watch him do some last-minute level editing, and see his nicole miller underpants (that is, even before the whole crowd did when orange-t-shirt girl told him to take it off), and chat with him about albums and touring and crowds while he set up. he did his (short?) set from and among and through the audience, taunting the balcony snobs who must not have been able to see him at all. the set was more abrasive and less wordy-flowy than last time, or the last two albums (though of course even the not-yet-released record is already old - he was doing stuff that won't come out until november, or more likely ever.) more dumbjokey ("stop eating," "i can't fuck it hurts too much") and noisey shouting choruses. i could dig it, but it would have been nice to hear a few more hip-hop tunes (he only did "ghostrider" from td&h) or some freestyling. maybe when he comes to olde club next year.

somebody asked him who he'd played with, he said "everybody." true, and it doesn't make much sense for him to be touring with the ps. but whatever. their set had a totally different energy, of course. they diverged little from the album (even in the set order: 1, 7, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, b-side, 9, 2, 10.) the three band members were like adorable caricatures: ben (soo-indie plaid pocket shirt) wore his geetar around his neck the whole time - except when he went to rock out on drums to end "prison" and "clark," which was pretty great to see - even though he only plays a tiny bit in some songs, so as not to look like a complete idiot (he's one of those singers who's compelled to grab the mic for a second before he sings each line); jimmy (brand new morr-music t-shirt) didn't seem to notice the crowd (even martha, who was literally sitting on stage watching him the whole time) but used all his gadgets to recreate the album bleeps and occasionally add a little more reverb or something (the few times when he messed up a little and the mix came out funny revealed how hard he was working the rest of the time), until the last number where he went all dntel-fuzzed out for a few minutes; jenny (holding up the 80s part of the bargain: bright white pants and jacket suit; b-52s-ish hair bob) did the little dances and hand gestures.

so it was fun to watch. and i was dancing the whole time anyway (though a lot of folks weren't.) they also had projected visuals, which would have worked better on a white screen than the upholstery-pattern on the back wall. rainbows for the boy-girl duet, microwave for the b-side, low-camera parkbenches for the single. best was old-school menagerie animation (sea-horses and unicorns) for "brand new colony," on which they invited the openers back up to shake something. rjyan and two of the certainly kids tripled up on a mic to croon "everything will change" about a hundred times, which was kind of surreal. so they played the whole album and left, and we were confused because they didn't turn the lights on, so we clapped in fits. then the band came back and said we only know one more, and i kept shouting "evan and chan!" but instead they did a cover which i thought was maybe dc4c but turns out was phil collins or mariah carey.

it ended early too - so early that there was a long wait at tom jones, and we went to wawa instead. mmm, rainbow popsicle worth every one of those 69 cents. okay, now you know alllll about it. time for food and sunny.

you may be doing this
you may be doing that
you may be doing this
you may be doing that
whaa! whaa!

zombie movie making took around ten of my hours last night, from getting made up (latex, crumpled tissue, loads of grey base with green, black, and purple highlights, powder and toothrot, later on further nastified with food-colored corn syrup blood and flecks of raw beef) at 5 to scrubbing off as much of it as i could (two showers later, there's still a lot left in my hair and forearms) until well past 3. all the time in between i got to lurch around like a sedated offkilter r2d2, sometimes venturing off set to find commonfolk to startle. of course i was sitting around doing nothing for ninety percent of the shoot, but it was lots of fun anyway. it didn't get really exciting until we moved from dupont to some secret rooms in parrish basement which had been completely made over into a zombie lair. martha, who was tagging along and helping out the crew, volunteered to play the recently killed human corpse during the "dinner" scene, which meant she got to lie there for about two hours with heaps of raw meat and fake blood on her bare stomach while we zombies crowded around slavering and ripped off pieces of meat to cram in our mouths. basically it was awesome. this film is going to be truly tremendous.

we needed a rest after that, so it's probably good that martha's alarm didn't go off in time for her early train. anyway, she's still here for now, so we get to do thom brunch and she can see a bit of rugby too. i'll catch ya later.

because the air outside will make
our cells divide at an alarming rate

having martha here (three days now, and each one she seems more inclined to enroll) makes life more normal and less normal (i guess depending partly on whether you think college life is normal) - it certainly creates that illuminating/revitalizing/self-otherizing distance that always comes with being in the presence of 'outsiders'/observers. it's a focus, albeit one of several - but not like she's affecting my schedule much. she's probably spending as much time with rob as with me (and my floor.) and evidently enjoying (even my boringest classes.)

she came to p.o.r. yesterday, when mark decided to show us breaking the waves instead of talking about the weil i started to read (except for ten minutes or so when he kept calling her "mcveigh.") it's just as devastating as i remember, and more engaging. i'm not sure if bess is emily watson prefiguring björk as selma, or vice versa, or if lars von trier just has all his lead actresses act the same way.

tim, becca, and meggie's art was perfect for the sunny day - lovely art, the best reception table i've seen here, and everyone wearing their pretty dresses. tapping behind the map room with drummers, and later in class with sister (whew!). then we caught a bit of wave twisters, which was weird but amusing. i would have liked to see atanarjuat again, but i guess one 3-hr epic arctic artpic is enough for one day.

no seder (certainly not, what with all that), which surprised my mother for some reason, but we did go to a bonfire. a best way to acknowledge this latest and brightest springburst before being plunged back coldwards (i don't dislike this new weather either, of course, but it can't help but feel like a holdover. slow progression is fine, but progression.) by firetime, the majestic full harvest moon was bled white and only intermittently visible (at times the interplay of cloud cover and light pollution made the only clear places in the sky look like the only clouds.) luminous, of course. luminous girl was there, of course, with her goofy simfriend, and gimpy morgan - but first it was just (drummer) boys. luke and eadley and i played three (mine was norm), progressing from 4 to 4 to 6 to 5 while gazy twirled a firestick and martha rustled some leaves.

i picked through the pile of tinder to find a resonant stick or two. just one, i beat against a log, and it elicited a surprisingly forceful response from the woods above. as i played on, pieces of the stick gradually fell away until i was left with the sturdy hemicylinder of its heart. eventually, i couldn't hear the sound of it striking the log, and the music i was making came solely from the haunted fractured echoes from across the trestle, which arose in response to my logstrokes as naturally as a tone sounding from a piano key. when that ended, i discovered that my stick had given birth to claves, so i tried to sustain that groove under morgan's saxophoning.

while we played, a timid trio approached: sorry for interrupting, they whispered, but when do you think you're going to be finished here? they wanted to have a bonfire too. of course we invited them to join us, in fire and music and merry; they offered their boughten wood and s'more makings, and said more people would be coming. they seemed tentative in accepting, and indeed stayed mostly off to the side with their battery lamp, shooting confused glances towards us or huddling on an opposite log. it felt like a weird reversion to some prehistoric proto-civilization pagaent, involving opposing clans and the secret of fire.

moving on, past some folks struggling down the slope with 12-packs of beer, magnolia petals in whartyard, free cake and expensive ice cream at paces. i needed to sleep then and i do now, even though baudrillard deserves a bit more attention. he'll get it, and you won't get a description of the cs/cex/ps show until tomorrow or later. but don't worry. everything looks perfect from far away.

the concert aside, today had lots of nice moments: 'fancy' sharples breakfast with m and my best homophonymous friends; guided x-rolls and a lovely impro with muted primaries and triple-decker-supports; joel's unassumingly heartfelt praise and encouragement for composition as a way of life. assassins casualties today: the rubber tip of my glasses frames (how?), element of surprise, my right pinky, phone cahl with george dahl. not ass.

periscopes
they've got everything you will ever need
(cex sang this to himself while he was setting up)

when i was, let's see, nine or ten? i made my stitched my first bit of embroidery, a little counted cross-stitch of a carousel horse with a little red oval plastic frame included in the kit. i didn't stitch them because i thought it was too corny and ruined the simple aesthetic, but the pattern called for, in light blue floss, the words "life is full of ups and downs."

(i was gonna write more, but cob and moof want to go to the concert now.)

under the table is good
but under your fingers is better

you seem fatigued, says martha, and oh, oh, i am. i have a headache (which didn't make accordioning drumming and shouting and shaking at rehearsal fun). and sac is giving me another one - for some reason which is really not clear to me, they really don't want me to have a party saturday. many many carefully polite and precise e-mails later, i may or may not be closer it's really hard to know. but i would really really like this to happen (and i know other people would too) on top of that i didn't get my internship (and, like, i had to contact them again to even find that out.) i like to talk about how i am uncannily fortunate (which is to say i always get what i want), and that's still more or less the case with this stuff (the less important particulars) - and very much true with the larger, life-size things (it still amazes me almost daily) - which makes this junk feel not only undeserved but sort of cosmically indiscreet.

that said, it was still a good day. i finished my A section and copied it over neatly during semantics class. i met albert, my roommate for next year. i saw some fabulous film shorts. i survived another violent attack, this one in parrish central, and i made a successful one of my own as well, on the sharplesian plain, which was just dotted with players. (sadly, my pants didn't fare these two episodes so well as i did: shortly after the first i noticed a little rip just below the right buttock, while the second brought on a smattering of impressively hi-liter-like grass stains. these beloved blue semi-plaid comfypants, the only thing i've ever bought at abercrombie-but-you'd-never-guess-it, have been with me for a long time, through many dance classes and rainy days. i wore them today so i wouldn't have to go to the dressing room to change. if i were in a better mood, this entry would have started with a paean to them.)

sleep, i think, as it has never failed me before. (it's even better than blanket music)

like johnny storm, i flame on
got an office at the four freedoms plaza with my name on
but mcs can't see me like the wife of reed richards
i'll be there amidst the rubble with ben grimm taking pictures

this is funny.

i know that it's not a party if it happens every night

it's far too beautiful (during the day, but now too, under the fullish-in-the-night bunny moon) to be serious about anything. not about schoolwork (though i'm feeling on-top-er of it than in past [that's tmesis, i learned today]). not about the potential pitfalls of emotional entanglements (what? whoever said emotional entanglements could have pitfalls? i defy you, sir!) and most certainly not about assassins.

i've been doing a pretty good job of avoiding the game-mentality, despite a number of attempts on my person (er, my body, not my victim), and from more than one source too. the first deserves a good recounting: i had just completed the tricky task of scooping a cone of pistachio ice cream and embedding it with reeses pieces® crumbles with one hand under my tray for 90% of the process (the mirror just makes you paranoid) - then i deposited my tray and slipped speedily up the stairs. joan made a lunge by the time i got to the landing, and pulled me down to the ground. within seconds, my glasses flew off my face, and (worse) my lovingly sculpted cone flew from my hand, splattering all over the place (i think - i couldn't quite see where the bulk of it went.) we had a good three or four minutes of concerted struggling; i cemented myself firmly against the wall and was able to gain enough of an upper hand to force her up and start edging her towards the stairs so i could dash for it. i had been shouting for a tray - and as rebecca approached with one i thought she was intending to save me. and she effectively did just that - by picking off my assailant. we glared at each other over the tray for a second, then i pawed around to discover my glazzies and high-tailed it to tap. later, she (rebes) made an attempt there, in flagrant violation of the spirit (and now the letter) of the dance class = safe space rule.

i don't know whether the circle was assigned randomly or not, but this (becca as my assassin) was exactly the sort of thing that proved my downfall last semester, when ester was two slots away. however, it seems that that ironic danger has passed, as becca reports that she has been despatched in kind. my this is going fast. somehow that all happened as i, keeping my wares about me, flitted from phoenix interview w/ benjling to sac meeting (no word on funding yet - this is for this saturday's barefoot informal, crunkadelia mark 8 i believe - but given the number of props they're probably still meeting) and back to liza rehearsal, where i encountered the sister. (and so, you see, i'm not being too serious about this game. with luck, it'll be over before the week.)

this now is one of those times when everything is crystalline (not perfectly clear, but flowingly) and satisfyingly precise and all there is left to do is smile. best news of today (i think): we have a full complement (3 and 2/2) of roomies for an apartment next year. hurrah!

this world is filled
and so awake
i stayed up late
to hear your voice

[jay-z : big pimpin’]
bettie serveert : story in a nutshell
[daedelus : girls (nstrmntl)]
geggy tah : don’t close the door

magnetic fields : promises of eternity

chemical brothers : my elastic eye

towa tei : a ring

the thermals : no culture icons
[whistling]
the human league : open your heart
[whistling]
matthew sweet : back to you

the kinks : picture book
[more difficulties?]
hefner : peppermint taste
[psa]
sleeper : feeling peaky
[psa]
steely dan : bodhisattva (alive!)
[loong outro, psa]
the sea + cake : sound + vision (p)
[psa]
they might be giants : hopeless bleak despair
[psa]
erlend øye : sheltered life
[psa]
yo la tengo : how to make a baby elephant float

rufus wainwright : across the universe (remix)
[collective wsrn id]
ted leo/pharmacists : m¥ vien ilin
[military id] >
pizzicato five : happy sad
[psa]
ry cooder : how can a poor man stand such times and live?
[aaaugh! damn defective cd players!]
kaada : thank you for giving me your valuable time
[ ]
old 97s : time bomb

so, ten out of sixteen - 'taint bad (even if some of them were faits accomplis) for a beautiful sunny sundy - and i even got to enjoy it (sunspot at my bedfoot turned me feline; moon and upside-down-trees on the other side of sharples from the sun.) more crosspollination: i used some foucault in my french thing and my français in the music paper. making the art (an easter-toned union jack) took an hour and a half. (and i didn't practice enough, but really.) the concert was maybe even better tonight - many earnest compliments on my gongbanging (marcantonio was especially effusive.) personally, i was more satisfied with my bowtying, so much so that i kept it on for another four hours. i should be able to despatch #2 and #3 tomorrow before moofer-d arrives, even if co-op does actually happen.

in other news: should i have a party this saturday (even better - would you like to help?)

i don't love anyone.
well, maybe my sister

goodness abounds. yesterday, just as the pregnant clouds burst asunder to unleash the blue which had better mean autumn is finally here, i sat alone over the grass and ate a scrumptious meal. rosie and i played scrabble in our sun bonnets, and i did a lot of laundry. in the evening, after 'carmina,' i somehow got the drunkest i've been in months, off two drinks (soyhopper and gin'n'oj) and a speedy gave of triv-p. it was a good weekend for parties too: i wasn't at piel a piel for very long, but i had more fun at san rio than i have at a party in a long time (more than sager and possibly screw?). it'd been a while since i really got into the dancing. and everything's better when you're wearing a cape (especially one that glows in the blacklight.)

oh! and: it's been reported elsewhere, but i've neglected to mention that we have secured funding for worthstock! among other things, i'm annoyed at this trope that we "saved" the festival, as though it were in grave danger of not happening. of course it would never go down without a diligent, persevering organizer or two (it's so nice that there are two of us this time around), but given that there was never a serious possibility that it just wouldn't happen. i guess that was the rhetoric we partly used to present it. but the process isn't so mysterious. anyway, if it helps you get excited then that's great: you should be excited about this, any way you can.

first year i missed the crum regatta altogether; last year i was walking down as everyone else was walking up. this morning i at least saw a few of the boats finish, and best of all admiral warner giving prizes. next year, i promise, i will see the whole thing. well, i had my dappled moments in the sun, and now i must buckle down. lots and lots:

to-do to-day (well, or soon)
1. write about my life [er, my concept of identity?] en français (3 pages)
2. semantics homework nine #2 (meet with people to discuss, then write up)
3. woodwind trio (complete 1st reprise, write in finale?, e-mail to joel)
4. music 48 paper
5. practice piano, while we're on the subject
6. practice accordion
7. gravity and grace
8. headstart on baudrillard -- foucault synthesis paper??
9. "bangers and mush" artwork and delivery
10. tidy up floor (well, better anyway - next: vacuum. like whut!)
11. find driver for martha
12. send reviews to publicists
13. worthstock e-mails
14. assassins "party" (might regret it, but. remind me not to get too involved, okay?)
15. chorus concert
16. look for summer possibilities

look outside your window
it's a beautiful day

…who cares that it makes plants grow?

i love it from inside anyway (i lurve it, i loave it, i luff it.) it's not so much that i don't believe in as that i've never managed to keep hold of raincoats for long, or galoshes. and i can see by the paths to sharples (though i'm starting not to be able to see them, as the trees in willets courtyard bud) that i'm going to wish i had 'em.

my gap between classes should somehow encompass fifty or so pages of judith butler, which will be interestingly punctuated by the dash (it tends to happen that i miss it in the fall and make it in the spring) and advising.

your generation confesses
before it transgresses
those secret movies
of daddy in your disco dresses
~

what i wanted to say about music:

like, screw pitchfork (yesterday.) i can see where they're coming from on the tengo - it really is a bit of a disappointment next to <3 and ø, and as their guy said it hurts to write that, but he might have been a bit more honest than me there ("brilliantly consistent" is a praising-with-faint-damnation subtle way of saying it's a little bit boring - á la dale's picking yesterday vespertine as his favorite because it's even-keeled), though from any other band it would still be an incredibly near-perfect record. but after what they said about my boy cex, i don't know if we can be friends anymore. too bad for them - they should have printed my review of that album when i sent it to them back in october, then i wouldn't have to be mad.

also: what the hayl language are the cocteau twins singing in? sure don't sound english to me.

and these lyrics don't in fact make any sense, do they?

to think of what we've been
and not to kiss again
is like pretending
this isn't the ending

i just left lang thinking it was ten o'clock. and then i realized i read the hands wrong and it's really ten to midnight. which means i was there for almost four and a half hours, working on a composition and taking a break to go to chorus rehearsal (carmina burana is fun! you should come to the concert!) i like the piece i'm writing so far (not much to it yet), but i'm of course making it hard on myself, trying to be all contrapuntal and emotive and so on.

so, all i need to do academicworkwise for tomorrow is a bit more of that. but there's so much else that needs going on. i can't talk about it all now, but basically the point is i can't talk about it all now.

the best part of today, maybe (both enjoyable and relevant): talking to elena and eli/alana during philorelg break about the multiplicity of components/personae within an 'individual', in the contexts of love, and relating but also self-awareness and beyond; claimed/constructed performative personae. i actually feel like i have a fairly well unified identity, possibly more so in the last few years, and it manifests or is perhaps partly created by this blogsite, which is a topic for further discussion later (also the specific characters of blogs in general, and how they relate with their authors.)

that said, i'm again at a point where "how are you" is a confusing question, and it's at least as much the "you" part as anything else. but still, i will try to answer. and i'm not answering "badly" any more, i'm answering "okay" and meaning it.

i was dancing when i was twelve
i was dancing when i was twelve
i was dancing when i was ohhh
i was dancing when i was ohhh

sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears -- but other times it can. it's suitable both for wallowing and for escapism. (i've needed both today.)

home past pirates in the courtyard psyching up for a gig that should have (or could have, or anyway would have) been mine - a reminder of another not-quite-so-recent heartbreak, which i still don't know how to deal with. not that there's much left to be dealt with. when i posted last i was resigned to venturing in by myself, apprehensive about but also comforted by the prospect of the more defined solitude of the city. but thanks to a last-minute phone call (i've almost forgotten how to use the phone), i had a companion. and companionship can't but be comforting.

south street was chilly and felt empty even for a weeknight, but the blossoming cherries towering above (several of them lit, bringing to mind one of my most beautiful nights ever [pre-blog, so no link]) were truly a heavenly sight - and almost easy to miss too. after a quick errand for a friend, and the still novel pleasure of winking my way into an overpriced and sold out show, we wormed about two-thirds of the way through a crowd of forty- and fifty-somethings (i'd believe that we were the only people there under 35, even.) and eventually another one (plus three) took the stage, positively foppish in a mid-thigh-length sport jacket and his preposterous scruffs of white hair.

as the chatty fellow in front of me predicted, joe jackson opened the set with "one more time," the first tune on his first album. later on he closed it with the last song in that album. it don't mean to suggest that he's not still "vital," whatever that means - and this is very explicitly a reunion tour (though couched too as a continuation, and we're supposed to play along with the bit about the "first three albums") - but he does seem like he's been relying a lot on his past: before this tour/album, there was a "sequel" album to his first ('86) comeback, a (fantastic) live album full of chestnuts, and a memoir, which is hardly a sign of life (but i want to read it anyway.)

of course lots of people are doing this now, but it's hard for me not to compare this to the recent elvis "resurgence." their careers have always been roughly parallel, albeit with joe operating at an undeniably lower artistic and commercial level. they've occasionally reattained, but never reduplicated, the brilliance of their debuts (my bias starts already - e's is easily one of my three favorite albums, joe's lucky to make the top fifty). it only took them two albums to abandon "punk" and not much longer to go "experimental" (joe: reggae, jump-blues/proto-neo-swing, world music, "jazz," a "symphony"; el: country, r&b, "americana," a brilliant song cycle.) and now they want to rock again. apart from flukey (and somewhat inexplicable) mid-eighties singles, neither has really regained the breadth of audience of the late seventies.

so why, next to the flame-throwing rock concert i saw in cleveland this summer, did this feel like such a nostalgia act? well. for one thing, though both are songwriters foremost, joe i think has maybe never got the part of being a musician too so well as the little hands of concrete. anyway, the band was a bit stiff at first, and i started to get worried, but after five or six songs they started to loosen up and rock out more. it was fun to see them (esp. graham maby, who i once saw with tmbg, is an awesome bassist), but i think my rock-out standards are higher than usual after seeing hot hot heat and spoon. one thing that those bands did (also supergrass) which is always exciting and impressive when done convincingly, but which joe didn't even attempt: not only do they play the tunes faster than on the record, but they speed up rather recklessly while playing.

the highlight of the show for me was a solo piano set in the middle, even though it started with the cringe-inducing sappy ballad from the new record (joe has written plenty of great songs, but, unlike elvis, he's also written some pretty dumb ones, including a number of his hits - like "i'm the man," which turned up as the encore - and there are plenty of those on the new album, though i do rather like a couple) which was made worse when joe said how much he liked it and the audience enthusiastically concurred. then: a cover of "any major dude," (a totally weird choice but shows off his chops and was fun), the truly lovely "real men" (dedicated to rumsfeld, and with a nod to tori amos, who unlike anthrax and chubby checker knows how to cover his tunes with out "fucking them up"), a neat arrangement of "stepping out," and "it's different for girls" as a segue back to the band. in all, a very enjoyable show and better than it could have been (e.g. if i'd paid for it), if about what i expected. that's good though.

really it was just good to get out. the whole thing went a long way to making me feel better. and so did mos' sermonizing on the way back home:

me, you, everybody: we are hip-hop.
so hip-hop is going where we going
so the next time you ask yourself where hip-hop is going
ask yourself: "where am I going? how am I doing?"

ps. this wsrn shirt business is ridiculous. (for once, my sympathies are with spiegel, although mostly i feel like there must be more to the story on all sides.)

i'm going to the city now, which will either make me feel better or worse. or more likely both. i'll be in touch when i get back.

i can't help from wondering

it's so so hard to write short record reviews. obviously, you have to not say everything you think, and not qualify everything you say. but, as you might have noticed, i'm not very good at that. hyphenation helps cheat at word count.

Yo La Tengo, Summer Sun
(Matador, 2003)
Rating: 8/10

Trendsetters, romantics, countrymen, and hey, everybody: rejoice! The latest (twelfth? who’s counting?) long-playing love letter to the world from Hoboken-noise-addicts-turned-worlds-greatest-band is here - and just in time for Summer! (Never mind the April snowshowers that cascade as I write this – it will be here soon.) Of course this is a Summer record, though it’s not quite the surf-fuzz beach party you might expect. This sun doesn’t beam so unabashedly; it just glimmers and glows and keeps you warm all night. Their quietest offering to date (not even a "Cherry Chapstick" to break up the calm), this sounds exactly, but exactly, like a Yo La Tengo record. Not to say it’s prefab (though isn’t that drum loop on "Nothing But You and Me" left over from "Saturday"?), but it resides comfortably within a familiar blueprint: gentle bossas, spoken-word slowburners, gossamer pop ("Little Eyes" may be the simplest, best thing here) and the inevitable 10-minute space-out jam; plus an instrumental or two (getting funky on "Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo") and of course a cover (Georgia takes on Big Star). Though not as consistently brilliant as their last two albums (titles too long to fit here, sorry), Summer Sun is at least as brilliantly consistent. In the face of a wistful sorrow that still pervades the lyrics, this is the sound of contentment.

Erlend Øye, Unrest
(Astralwerks, 2003)
Rating: 7.5/10

Kaada, Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time
(Ipecac, 2003)
Rating: 6/10

Apparently, Scandinavian good sense dictates that the Norse invasion come in waves. Well, Swedepop has died down for the nonce, and the shimmery Icelandic thing has more or less run its course, so it’s up to the Norwegians to concoct a New Nordic Norm. They seem to be presenting less of a unified front: from Beckish orch-popster Sondre Lerche to chillout mavens Röyksopp to the strummy folk-poetry of the Kings of Convenience.

If this tenuous "scene" has a figurehead, it might be (ex?-)King Erlend Øye, who had a vocal hand in the latter two projects, and has demonstrated aptitude in acoustic and electronic milieux. His solo debut finds him collaborating with electro-notables on a record of "pedigreed synthpop", Postal-Service-style – though Øye traveled the globe (Uddevalla; Barcelona; Shelton, CT) rather than trusting the international mails. The result is marvelously smooth: despite highlights – nintendo-ish workout "Athlete," house-funky "The Talk," Prefuse 73’s think-piece "Every Party" – it’s most notable for a retro-fresh consistency. Synthpop is truly a universal language.

Norwegian-grammy-nominated (!?) Kaada takes a more idiosyncratic, original approach to giddy electronica, cutting-and-pasting percussion breaks, string swells, horn lines, and soulful vocals into an edgy exhilarating stew. That might not sound too original – but as with any stew it’s all about flavor, and Kaada’s concoctions have a distinct one: evocatively but imprecisely nostalgic (shades of everything from doo-wop to Stax/Volt soul – the vocals are especially effective); bemused but neither goofy nor ironical. Somewhat reminiscent of Fatboy Slim’s last one (though ironically this is the only non-Astralwerks release I’ve mentioned) but far more structurally complex and sonically varied. His creativity doesn’t always pan out, but his talent is evident.

i don't have much trouble starting these things, and i'm pretty good at being in them and being after them. but this part, damnit, whatever it means, just plain sucks. i feel awful. right now, i just feel like an idiot. thinking about it makes me dizzy, and this is the mind game that i need to escape from, so i don't to think about it too much, just let the emotion(s) come and flood. i haven't cried this much in a long long time.

like with anything, i guess, you have to optimistic at the beginning, and afterward, at the end, but at some point in the middle that's not good enough, and you have to try to be realistic - just now it feels like pessimism. so i don't know. ira keeps telling me "you don't have to be so sad," and i think he has a point. there's comfort: it's an ending only in a limited sense; in other maybe more important ways it's not that at all. i'll be fine. it's harder to cry in the mornings. and someday, soon soon, the weather will be happy too.

i always liked this line but i'm still not sure whether i think it's true:

…if you do it and you're still unhappy…

people seem to be having difficulty with this weather, natural and artificial. but it seems pretty routine to me. change your clock, put on a scarf. again i get to watch it falling outside my kohlberg third corner classroom, where wind currents and temperature differentials between the buildings make flakes in each of four windows travel in a distinctly different direction.

the weekend. little accomplished workwise and my room only marginally less messed (though i concur it's not as messy as it looks) but of course i enjoyed myself. work, well, is just not what it's about.

the jazz concert was a little ridiculous. i had a great time working out with percussionist alex and morgan, even though i hadn't played with them until an couple hours before the show. we didn't even have a chance to run through everything we performed, we were still discussing some arrangements on stage. not that any degree of unprofessionalism would stop the audience (substantially depleted due to the simultaneous rhythm'n'motion show) from lapping it up. we closed with a latinized moanin', a harebrained idea of john's which we had literally not played once before the show. somehow it built up a ferocious pitch of intensity, and somehow we ended it. okay.

sager i can't tell you much about. (not because i was drunk or anything.) you know if you were there. it was fun. not quite as good as last year (music, decorations, energy - all quality but not as transcendent as last year's - on second thought i won't link to my entry from a year ago; you can find it yourself) but that could have just been my experience. more nudity this time, thanks (but no thanks) to erica and tika's soiree. hm. i think veronica was my favorite. blair and syd as cupcakes were adorable and get extra points for noticing the lewis carroll theme. as rabi tells you, i had curly blue pipe-cleaner antennae and shiny blue 'lashes, both attached to my glasses frames (since i didn't have any contacts to wear, i turned my deficiency into an asset) to match my much-complimented cobalt slip (all items from rebeccas.) so i was kind of a caterpillar. i danced with her most of the time - i didn't have the energy to want to dance with most of the others.

interlude (does music become appropriate because i put it on or vice versa?) :

you know I’ll always wait
each time you take a step
so rest yourself down here a while
rest your sleepy little head

but how do I know if that’s what you want?
how do I know if you’d care?

yesterday lived up to its name (who named the days?) and so did the fun fair i guess. well if anything did it was the spoon concert. two of our party dropped out (work, it does this) so peter and jake (who accompanied me to my first philly concert first week first year) took their place. well timed - we missed/avoided sugarquief (fancy, that is how you spell it) but caught crooked fingers, squeezing as much rawk as they could muster (not a whole lot) out of the earnest "blue-collar" "americana" rock they epitomize so well (peter, on a springsteen tune: i like it when bands cover the artists they're obviously ripping off.)

and then! my god. this was by far the best show of the last few weeks (if not the year) and that's saying something. along with yo la tengo and (who else again?) spoon really are the best band there is. i'm convinced. they just have so many good songs! they played many many for a long time and even then i could think of others ("take the 5th", "reservations," "stay dont go") but that's just quibbling. it seems silly to list highlights (though "car radio" in the encore made me yelp and thrash the loudest), because everything they did was so. right. on. (or as britt would say "aallriyght! c'mmmon!") and that's the fiercest two-note piano playing i've ever witnessed. and, r & i were right up front, and had just the grandest time doing that indierock-couple-at-shows thing. whee, couldn't stop smiling.

so we left spoon and came home to spoon (not really, ha ha.) (i glanced at the french assignment long enough to see it said "choisissez" a genre, and not explicitly "ecrivez" 3 pages, which is weak i know but i needed to sleep and wake up and sleep some more.) oh, oh. um. help. these vicissitudes are exactly what i don't want. and i know it will swing back. and so, and so. ah. there's more news of course but i ought to stop now and write some reviews. short, they will be short i say!

sibella
we don't make sense together
but my heart's with you

ps. today i got an envelope with a new passport and an old birth certificate. nice to have proof of existence again.

[calexico : attack el robot! attack (p)]
t rex : mambo sun

spoon : laffitte don’t fail me now
spoon : agony of laffitte
erlend øye : the talk
supergrass : za

black dice : endless happiness (p) >
yo la tengo : winter a-go-go >
black dice : endless happiness some more, with more percussion >
yo la tengo : moonrock mambo >
black dice : more endless happiness, flutes and drones >
yo la tengo : don’t have to be so sad >
black dice : endless happiness, just wave sounds, gradually subsuming >
spoon : change my life
alpinestars : burning up

minus the bear : thanks for the killer game of crisco® twister (p)
kaada : honk
white stripes : i want to be the boy to warm your mother’s heart (p)
the essex green : southern states (p)
the human league : open your heart
max tundra : fuerte
[yo la tengo : sea urchins]
bill frissell : the tractor
longpigs : on and on
deerhoof : l’amour stories
loose fur : chinese apple (p)
scarboro aquarium club : i can feel angels (p)

slumped, i was to be cleaning my room (making some dandy flighty art now) and waiting elena homework. then the phone ring and rebecca says 'come to the fun fair!' and paul simon (and his background chanteuses) are telling me to 'have a good time.' so i guess i must.

i was practicing and then realized i could barely remember how to play the intro to "still crazy," so i figured i'd better put this on. what a fantastic album. just the right sad and happy songs. about leaving is easy and it's okay. so comfort. "i'm gonna leave you now and here's the reason why…" and there's phil woods with the crazy saxophone solo.

so i sit by the window and i watch the cars
i fear i'll do some damage one fine day
but i would not be convicted by a jury of my peers

in between the shows: i read 224 pages of foucault (all except the last 12), attended a most productive discussion of same (which made me glad for intervening and sorry for missed potential of past meetings), rerevised and submitted my paper ("the discipline is punnish" - if there's a time it's okay to make puns that bad, it's in the title of a paper about puns), and continued to not have my id.

other week highlights: the panel on social sciences integration, which demonstrated that swat professors can say wonderfully cogent and insightful things and oddly pigheaded and narrowminded things in about the same proportions as swat students (high). the student video fest, especially duolan's múmmy-mailbox wonderland, haendler's meaning-of-s'more parody i guess and smalls/skonnect's irony-destroying (and discreetly time-limit-disregarding) "police car movie." storysharing philorelg in the president's sun. and the promos kept piling up (waist-deep now.)

today, whenever it decides to start, will be about jazz and gender. i'm trying to think of a lewis-carroll-themed outfit that will be appropriately skimpy. good thing it will feel warmer tonight than it does now (i hear at home they're having an ice storm, shades of 1991.)

what belongs on the love life of the octopad: selected yo la tengo 1995-2003? you tell me.

little eyes will open but they don't see very far
you can only hurt the ones you love
that might be true, but better said:
you only hurt the ones that love you

(what an ungodly mashup that would be)

two very different concert experiences. both started out a little bad, but got better.

last night: the bad things: i couldn't find my earplugs. i somehow wasn't on list despite brendan's cordial e-mail. it turned out not to be in the sanctuary but in the basement of the church, which has a very low stage, making it hard to see except from right close. and my folk were huddled in the center (under a light for reading) so i didn't really feel like pushing up. and styrofoam's set wasn't as exciting as the stuff i'd heard, though he did play a nice remix of "the postman" (my saddest song.) but all of that's petty and superficial, right?

the notwist are a much better live band than you might guess from their (new) record. only about half their set came from neon golden - the other stuff is noisier, guitarier, clearly more live. but the ng stuff was amped-up too; beds and beats altered, more freakouts, much more danceable. not that many people were dancing in that den of stifling hip. rob thought markus's voice was suffering from a cold, but it could have just been shoddy mixing. i made my way up to the second row for the second encore (i was hoping for "consequence," but "off the rails" is nice too), so i could see their black indie t-shirts (low, ms. john soda, somethin.) the other members are close-cropped blond and thin and germanic, but markus is decidedly not - he looks kinda like james mcnew. and i saw a guy robbie, mariah's friend, who triend to convince that i was mariah's friend. silly.

to-night: good that we left asap after 5, since even though the drive was only an hour an a half, we didn't get there until after 8:30 for a 7:00 show. you see, jen has this curse which prevents her from going to any rock concerts. but i had faith that my widely recognized imdomitable good luck could disarm the curse. as alex says, "the closer you get to a place, the easier it is to get farther away." we ending up coming at it from the north, from the west, from the south, and from the east before we found it, distracted by the search for these mysterious "jug handles" that the directions kept talking about. but we made it.

good thing it took so long, too, because we didn't even miss the second opener but we did miss a lot of standing around waiting in a room full of suburban new jersey high school girls in emo baby-tees. because that's who was at the show. maybe they were confused and meant to see the 'all-american rejects' next door. the tall skinny guy in the sleatter-kinney shirt looked kind of bewildered. i staked out a forward but noncommittal spot, and entertained myself by keeping track of who was mouthing along to which preshow tunes.

they were playing a mix of canonical rock between 2002 and 1966, analogous to my "big stupid guitar" tape from a while back. at first i was like, "wake up." "street-fighting man"? "search and destroy"? could they be a little more obvious? then i remembered - oh yeah, it's rock and roll! the dumb-barrelhouse piano of "hey bulldog"? nice! the organ-tone bridge fake-out of "just"? rock, baby! (r-head's best moment ever? i think so.) and it was great to see everyone rocking out - from the preposterously glammed-out red-tie dude in the front, emphatically emoting all the words to "this charming man," to the teenyboppers bopping their teens to "last nite" - they can all get down like this.

"yoshimi" faded out (hey, that's not r'n'r), and HHH took the stage. hah! clank clank clank clank on the cowbell and "talk to me, dance with me" ripped through the room. the teenagers didn't need an invitation - they got to moshing and crowdsurfing posthaste, energy echoing back and forth from crowd to stage. i was on the near fringes of the pit (enthusiastic, but good-natured) for most of it, finding space to dance and people to smile with, but by the closer "bandages" (on mtv? so that's why they were there?) i was in the thick of it - you had to be really.

the audience i could take or leave (i wonder if all their shows have been like this on the tour, or if it's a suburban jersey thing), but the band were so right on. they played a lot of non-album stuff, but who cares, it was all just as pounding. rock rock wreak. steve bays is fantastic - he actually reminds me a lot of jonathan richman: not nearly so oddball, but very earnest and smiley, and conversational. he bantered ("what? war sucks? oh, we're canadian, we don't care about that") and kept a good face as they suffered a rash of equipment problems (inordinate really - i'm sure it sapped energy for them, but they barely showed it, and it didn't affect the sound much.) i mean, he still rips into it when he sings, but i can imagine him, in a few years, saying "hey, this punk rock's a little stiff for me" and start writing songs about dinosaurs.

another weird thing: the audience didn't clap for an encore. they were totally enthusiastic and into it, but as soon as the band left the stage, they turned and headed for the exits. have they not yet learned about encores? i'm confused. so, we had to leave too ($10 for the vinyl ep? gaah, no thanks), stopping at wendy's ("open late" - if by late you mean 1:00) for BBCs and our final taste of weird new jersey, Xtra Pibb.

zwan is becoming official driving to concerts in other peoples cars music. i hate to say it but the first two tracks are getting to me. only, who says "lah de dah"? c'mon billy.

lah de dah, lah de dah
lah de dah, lah de dah

skipping home with a lilt left over from the tango louisa and i nailed down off the record, a quirky shifting form on which we'll extemporize more fluidly after a few more runsthrough. feels so good to be jamming again.

i wrote down my life on the back of a music 12 quiz during class. it covers the next few days in the in most detail, but the rest is represented symbolically as well. they're going to be dense, these next few. if you see me writing here, you should probably tell me to get back to work.

it's conceivable that i might go to upwards of three rock concerts this weekend. also in lucky bastid dept: i got as many cds in the mail today as i have digits or years. and that's about how much i paid for them too.

faith
is such a beautiful thing
but time waits for no one
so why don't we get it on?

(faith --
you're driving me away
you do it every day
you don't mean it but it hurts
like hell)