Pete Lit

Okeh

This week I was pleased to discover that my office building stands on the former site of the Chicago recording studio of pioneering jazz label Okeh Records, where Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five cut all of their sides. Alas, my building only dates to 1987, so Satchmo's spirit doesn't exactly stalk the halls. And I haven't been able to find a photo of the old building.

Boy's gotta have it.

What a fantastic bit of local ephemera: a tape box cover from Chicago's Universal Recording Studios, circa 1960. Music-related, vivid artwork, and a Bertrand Goldberg-designed building that still stands. What's not to love?

"Your 83 year old grandmother called..."

I don't know if this note is real or not, but if so, that is one awesome grandma. David Berman is the borderline-genius behind the Silver Jews.

Dougher on K

Nicely done: Sarah Dougher reviews Mark Baumgarten's Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music. Dougher is a former K artist, so she brings more perspective and insight than most reviewers could. Seems the author might have dwelled a bit too much on Calvin Johnson and the earlier years of the label, at the expense of other K contributors and the label's last ten years, though the book does sound good overall.

Scruffy the Cat, Tiny Days

Scruffy the Cat's Tiny Days, one of my favorite 1980s albums, is now (briefly?) available as a free download from a longtime fan. I assume the band is okay with this - the album has been out of print for ages - since one of its founders, Stona Fitch, is linking to that blog post from his Facebook page. Go grab this great album now, before the lawyers from the record label start sharpening their knives.

Once, there was greatness here.

Name
Address
Memories

The McClelland-Marx Summit

Ted McClelland insulted [1] 1980s pop star Richard Marx online, which irritated Marx so much that the two eventually held a sort of summit meeting at a neighborhood tavern in Rogers Park. Here's McClelland's pre-summit assessment of Marx:

Richard Marx — author of the 1980s pre-prom ballad "Right Here Waiting," the 1980s prom ballad "Hold on to the Nights," and the 1980s post-prom ballad "Endless Summer Nights" — was not just far outside my musical tastes, I thought he was ear cancer. I was convinced Richard Marx was a poor man’s Kenny Loggins who had written "Hold on to the Nights" after consulting with a marketing team who told him the cassingle could be sold to 18-year-olds at tuxedo rental stores and dress shops.

And his opinion of Marx didn't exactly change after meeting him. Funny piece, well worth your time.

[1] That is, Marx felt insulted. The comment wasn't an insult. Truth hurts, baby.

"I can't imagine any writer coming up with something that's pure character."

As I've mentioned many times, the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is one of my favorite songwriters. To me, his songs are narratives that truly qualify as literature - it just happens to be literature in 3-minute segments that is set to music. (Of course, he's also a published author.) Here he talks to Willamette Week about creating characters in his songs.

Any character that you come up with is equal parts yourself or people you know, for the most part. Characters are in a large part yourself as you imagine yourself in lived situations. I can't imagine any writer coming up with something that's pure character. I think that's the most interesting thing about writers of science fiction. They're dreaming up people that are not human at all. But I think when you write, you end up talking about yourself and other people you know no matter how hard you try not to.

Though I shy away from fiction that is explicitly autobiographical, I also realize that most protagonists in fiction are based at least partly on the writer, and that only rarely is fiction purely fictional.

"It wasn’t like...'Oh, I’ll try to write a shitty power ballad to make some money.'"

This sounds great: I'm Now, a film documentary of the great but under-acclaimed Seattle band, Mudhoney. Julie is a long-time fan (so much so that in 1993 she named her new kitten Mudhoney, later shorted to Mud) and though I didn't really follow any of the Seattle bands during the grunge era, I later developed a genuine appreciation for the band. Sounds like they've always done things on their own terms (witness the Mark Arm quote above), which of course is exactly how it should be for everyone but unfortunately is a very rare occurrence.

And on a marginally related and completely gratutious note, check out my short story "Freewheeling", which was published at Dogmatika in 2006 and imagines a fanboy's reaction to the Mudhoney's brief breakup.

"I think of him as a friend I never knew."

Over at The Weeklings, Janet Steen writes a lovely tribute to Elliott Smith, who passed away nine years ago this week.

The odd thing about pregnancy and childbirth is how close they can feel to death at times. In that pregnant or postpartum condition, there is an almost mystical understanding of the fragility of life and of the spectacularly fine line between a heart beating and a heart stopped. There is such slippage between those two states and yet we go on most days not thinking about it at all. I was still in a slightly dreamlike awareness of this at the time that I heard about Smith.

I feel the same way about Smith, as a friend I never knew. (Same with the late Mark Sandman.) But Smith's sudden death didn't devastate me as it did his older fans, since I wasn't very familiar with him at the time and didn't first get into his music until months later. But I've quickly been catching up ever since, and it's been a truly rewarding experience. There is a pervasive sadness to Smith's music, but also just enough hints of happiness and optimism to keep listening. I wish I knew about him sooner - though I'll always have his recorded music to savor, I would have loved to see him perform in person. The solo acoustic concert bootlegs I've heard are pretty wonderful in their intimacy.

Leo Covers Parker

I finally updated the "Listening" section of my sidebar, with Ted Leo's solo cover of Graham Parker's "Passion Is No Ordinary Word." I was quite pleased to hear this song, since from the very first time I ever heard Leo, I've thought how remarkably similar his voice is to Parker's. The song is yet another example of Leo's impeccable taste in covers. I wonder what Parker is doing these days - haven't heard anything about him in a long time.

(Via Largehearted Boy.)

Minipalooza!

This Sunday, August 12, my daughter Maddie and her band, Nuclear Plankton, are performing in Minipalooza, a benefit rock festival. Minipalooza is a great program put together by West Side Music (where Maddie has been taking guitar lessons for the last two and a half years) which organizes kids into bands, who then rehearse a handful of songs every week and finally perform at the festival. There will be three kid bands performing, plus two "grownup" bands. I've heard Nuclear Plankton practice a few times, and they're really good - at Minipalooza they'll be doing "I Love Rock and Roll" (with Maddie belting out the lead vocal, with a great Joan Jett snarl), the Beatles' "Come Together", the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" and the Surfaris' "Wipeout."

Minipalooza should be a lot of fun for the whole family (all-ages show!), cheap ($5 cover), and for a good cause - the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It's at Live 59 in Plainfield (16108 Route 59, between Renwick Road and Fraser Road), starting at 2 PM. If you happen to be in the area on Sunday afternoon, please consider attending. I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Ozzy Osbourne, Neanderthal

There's now scientific proof, and Al Burian explains why it makes perfect sense.

The main thing that separates Neanderthals from Homo Sapiens, as with Ozzy and the music journalists, is language. Human beings, alone amongst animals, communicate with discrete units of vocabulary in infinitely recombinable variation, giving them a survival advantage in the long-term evolutionary sense, but not necessarily equipping them to optimally appreciate contemporary music.

Burian (Burn Collector) is my favorite zinester, though I haven't read anything of his since he left Chicago. Might be time to reacquaint.

Guthrie

Good stuff: Billy Bragg on Woody Guthrie.

However, it's not what Woody did in the 1940s that still riles people in these parts. It's what his followers did in the 60s that made Woody a pariah in his home state. For Woody was the original singer-songwriter, the first to use his voice not just to entertain, but to ask why people should remain dirt poor in a country as rich as the US.

It was Woody's words that prompted the young Robert Zimmerman to leave his home in the Iron Range of Minnesota and head for New York. Changing his name to Bob Dylan and singing as if he came from the red dirt of Oklahoma, he inspired a generation of articulate young Americans to unleash a torrent of criticism against the complacency of their unequal society. The fact that Woody was a hero to that generation of long-haired freaks ensured that he and his songs would remain largely unsung in Oklahoma.

On a separate note, Guthrie's long-lost novel House of Earth will be published next year. Belated honors for a great American.

Oh my god, Def Leppard is totally ripping off...

...um, Def Leppard.

In order to cut the label out of its earnings, the band has gone back to the studio to re-record its most popular tunes, producing what it calls "forgeries" -- note for note reproductions of the original studio cuts.

Fight the power, you multi-platinum-selling colossus!

Elliott Smith

I listened to a lot of Elliott Smith over the weekend, including burning an retrospective disk for a friend. The brilliance of Smith's music and the tragedy of his life make such a compelling mixture that I can't help being drawn in, again and again. I didn't start listening to Smith until after his death, the shocking suddenness of which dove me back into the one song of his I owned, "Rose Parade", from an old CMJ Music Monthly sampler disc. I had never listened closely to the song before that, but after revisiting its near-perfect combination of melodicism, gritty street-level lyrics and pensive sadness, I was hooked.

After that I dabbled in a few free mp3s at the Paste magazine site, then bought either/or (with the proceeds of a check from, fittingly enough, a class-action lawsuit against the major record labels for price fixing), then got a burned copy of XO from a friend at my previous job, and finally received the posthumous collection From a Basement on the Hill and the utterly excellent Figure 8 as gifts. (I still haven't picked up the first two albums or the from-the-vaults collection New Moon, and I'm not sure if I ever will. The four albums that I own are so richly fulfilling that I don't feel much need to be a completist.)

For several years now I've had my eye on Matthew LeMay's XO, his short study of that album from Continuum's endlessly fascinating 33 1/3 series. I've never seen the book in person, but have had it on both my Powell's and Amazon wishlists, hoping someone would gift it to me. (I'm impossible to shop for, so when anyone asks I just point them to my wishlists.) But no luck there. So this afternoon, being a beautiful day in the city, I took a stroll over to Reckless Records on Madison to browse the short shelf of 33 1/3 books they stock. I didn't remember seeing XO during my previous visit, but this time, there it was. After paging through, it looked really good, and so I parted with some of my mad money (a small fund reserved for just such a small occasion) and bought it. The combination couldn't be more perfect: Reckless (whose Lakeview store I used to haunt for endless hours during my first city stint), literature and Elliott Smith. I almost couldn't not buy the book.

XO is probably my favorite Elliott Smith album. For me it perfectly bridges the gap between the indie-troubador strumming of either/or and the glorious power-pop of Figure 8, and beautifully encapsulates Smith's formidable artistic talent. I'm really looking forward to reading LeMay's book, preferably with the album playing on my iPod. And possibly a handkerchief to cry into.

Seam

At The L Magazine, Tobias Carroll's list of top (but unlikely) candidates for the deluxe reissue treatment is topped by one of my old favorites, Seam:

Hey, with Bitch Magnet, Temporary Residence has already reissued one of Sooyoung Park’s bands’ bodies of work. And Seam are a fantastically underrated band — over the course of three albums for Touch & Go, they did the anguished loud/quiet/loud thing better than almost anyone. But there’s also a host of music from them that’s now out of print: from their debut album Headsparks to their final single "Sukiyaki," also featuring a fine cover of David Bowie’s "Heroes."

The Problem With Me and Are You Driving Me Crazy? are both excellent, and highly recommended.

Chris Mars and drummer jokes

Replacements drummer (and later solo musician, now visual artist) Chris Mars is, somewhat perversely, an avid collector of "drummer jokes." His Bar/None bio includes some of them, including this favorite of mine:

Q: What is the last thing a drummer ever says to his band?
A: "Hey guys...how 'bout we try one of my songs?

His solo debut, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, will always have a special place in my heart.

Stumbling over the Mats in downtown Joliet

Last Friday, while driving home from the train station, I was stopped in traffic waiting for a river drawbridge to reopen. It was a warm day and I had the window rolled down, as did the twentysomething guy in the next car. He was cranking his stereo, rocking out to a song that I had never heard, though the band sounded vaguely familiar. The singer reminded me of Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, but the song rocked harder and more raggedy than any of his solo work that I'm familiar with. I finally turned off my radio, trying to hear the song more clearly. The only words I could discern was the phrase "temptation eyes", which was repeated enough times to be, I hoped, its title.

So when I got home I googled "temptation eyes", with the top results being the 60s folk-rock band The Grass Roots, who apparently did the original. But I figured the raucous version I heard couldn't have been by that band, so I then scrolled down further in the results and found that the song had, indeed, been covered by the Replacements. It was a previously unreleased outtake from the Let It Be era, and was recently released as a bonus track on the reissued edition of that great album, which to my mind was the Replacements' best. Over the weekend I streamed the song several times on Grooveshark, and love it. Since I already own the original album, I'll probably download just the bonus tracks soon.

This discovery pleased me on two levels: one, to stumble on unknown songs from the heyday of one of my old favorite bands; and two, the fact that there's actually a young guy out there (probably not unlike myself at that same age) who rocks out to Mats outakes that are almost thirty years old. So there's still hope for today's youth. Thank you, Cass Street Bridge.

Irish March revisited

This month I'm once again reading nothing but Irish fiction, starting with William Trevor's Felicia's Journey. (I got a late start, not diving in until I finished my previous book. I might extend Irish March a week into April.) Though I love Trevor's prose, at forty pages into the book there's still mostly been backstory - I'm really ready for the narrative to finally move forward. After Trevor, I'll read either Anne Enright's The Gathering or Kevin Barry's City of Bohane.

And of course I've been listening heavily to my Pogues albums this week. Though I own their first four albums, only If I Should Fall From Grace With God has earned full-album-download status on my iPod, with just selected tracks from Peace and Love, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash and Red Roses for Me. Corned beef and cabbage is also on the menu at home tomorrow night, though I might skip the Guinness for some Two Brothers or Bell's that I already have in the fridge.

Greg Norton

Too weird: Former Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton celebrated his 53rd birthday last weekend in Chicago, at a show by local Hüsker Dü tribute band Hüsker Düdes. He's still rocking the curlicue moustache, isn't fond of Bob Mould's memoir ("Bob's book is a work of historical fiction.") and, to my surprise, is back in music - though hopefully with more congenial bandmates. Rock on, Greg.

February 15

Post-Valentine's blues? None for me, but if you have them, then commiserate with my favorite Valentine-aftermath songs: Billy Bragg's "Valentine's Day Is Over" (from The Peel Sessions) and the Crabs' "February 15th" (from What Were Flames Now Smolder).

You never forget your first.

It recently occurred to me how, with bands and musicians that I've discovered in their mid-career and later, it's the first album of theirs I hear that remains my long-term favorite. No matter how great their other albums are, it's the first that stays with me. The most prominent examples are R.E.M.'s "Reckoning", Sebadoh's "Bakesale", Lou Reed's "New York", Dumptruck's "Positively", the Replacements' "Pleased to Meet Me", Hüsker Dü's "Flip Your Wig", Built to Spill's "There's Nothing Wrong With Love", and the Mekons' "Rock and Roll." There must be some sort of mental imprinting going on. At mid-career or later, despite there already being a broad body of work to experience, it's the first-heard one that really sticks. When I've been listening to a band from the very beginning (like the Vulgar Boatmen, Uncle Tupelo and Vehicle Flips), it's more understandable that I would glom onto that first album and love it to death, especially with the band not yet having a second album to distract my attention.

The only major exceptions to this first-heard rule are the Pogues ("Peace and Love" was the first, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" is the favorite), the Feelies ("Only Life" the first, "The Good Earth" the favorite) and Pavement ("Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" the first, "Slanted and Enchanted" the favorite). Obviously not a hard-and-fast rule, but there still seems to be something to it, at least for me.

The Clean

I finally updated my Listening section over in the sidebar, with "In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul" by New Zealand legends The Clean. Not sure whether or not the title is a Beatles reference, though probably not, since the song isn't particularly Beatlesque. Regardless, good stuff. Enjoy.

Sometimes my iPod is a genius

Usually my iPod is an idiot. The shuffle mode is often baffling - from nearly 1,600 songs, it seems to get into ruts where it repeatedly serves up songs from an artist for which I only have one album. For months it was on a Little Walter kick, picking one of his songs from Confessin' the Blues every day or two while much better-represented artists would go weeks without being heard. And lately it seems fixated on the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, again from just one album.

But on rare occasions the iPod's selections seem almost sublime. This morning it played, in order, Television's "Guiding Light", Galaxie 500's "Way Up High" and Yo La Tengo's "Pablo and Andrea." Television to Galaxie 500 to Yo La Tengo - such a wonderfully natural progression, almost perfect. Okay, so the Velvet Underground would have been a better fit than Television, but still, this is a dumb machine we're talking about here. I remain impressed with the choice of that troika of bands, even though I'm sure the iPod will be baffling me again soon.

"Halloween Parade"

Yesterday I finished the second draft of my new story collection, Where Once the Marshland Came to Flower. Though the title is a nod to a line to Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make (each story is set in a different Chicago neighborhood), the impetus to my collection was a single line ("and some crack team from Washington Heights") from Lou Reed's "Halloween Parade." That line came to mind one morning five years ago as my train approached the Washington Heights station on Chicago's South Side, and as it stuck with me I began to imagine a collection of Chicago stories, with each inspired by a song from Reed's New York album. The book would never have existed without Lou, and particularly that great album, and even more particularly that memorable song. So in Lou's honor, here's the song:

Lou Reed, "Halloween Parade"

Southern boys just like you and me

By now the word has gotten around that R.E.M. is breaking up, after 31 long and mostly fruitful years together. I'll readily admit that the band hasn't been a constant in my life, as my tastes and theirs have shifted here and there, and that they haven't made an album that's meant much to me since Automatic for the People, which came out in 1992. Still, they were a big part of my college years, though only intermittently since then. But I'm still staggered by the shimmering brilliance of the first three albums (Chronic Town, Murmur and Reckoning), and if no album of theirs has totally floored me after that, each had several songs that lodged in my brain and wouldn't budge, even now. I'm very glad that the band is going out on its own terms, and has the good sense to realize that it's the right time. I'll be forever grateful to them, and many of their songs, from "You Are the Everything" to "Gardening at Night" to "King of Birds" to "Perfect Circle", will always be with me.

So farewell, gentlemen. Rest, reflect, and take your time figuring out what comes next. Because there will certainly be a next for each of you, if not all together. But meanwhile, stroll through your garden, smell the roses, and count every one of those hundred million birds.

"Lights"

This is simply lovely: Mark Olson and Gary Louris (of the Jayhawks) and Victoria Williams performing "Lights."

Hornby and Springsteen

At my friend Tim Hall's webzine Undie Press, Mark Cashion discusses putting together a chapbook that weds the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and Nick Hornby's essay (from his Songbook) about the song. This installment is Part 1 of 2 (with the conclusion coming next month) and though it ends on a downer, a quick look back at the opening sentence implies that everything turned out just fine. Hurray. And Hornby sounds even cooler than I had imagined.

(Spoiler Alert: Here's the full story. Double Spoiler Alert: Apparently copies may still be available. But as much as I love Nick Hornby and that song, $60 is just too rich for my blood.)

Phil Alvin, Unsung Stories

July 4th always gets me thinking about American music, which yesterday had me delving into old Blasters videos on YouTube (including, of course, "American Music"). Which then lead me to looking on iTunes, just for the hell of it and expecting to find nothing, for Phil Alvin's first solo album, Unsung Stories. The album has never been released on CD - it came out in 1986, or just before the era when all new releases automatically came out on CD. (My guess is that the album probably didn't sell particularly well, and Warner Brothers simply cut its losses and didn't bother with a CD release.) I've owned the vinyl LP since around 1988 and have always loved it, enough to seriously consider digitizing it in recent years since I figured the record company would never do so.

Imagine my thrill, then, to actually find Unsung Stories on iTunes yesterday! Within seconds I was bopping along to "Someone Stole Gabriel's Horn", singing all the lyrics by heart despite not having listened to the LP in years. The album is a terrific slice of Americana, with Alvin reinterpreting a great bunch of old standards with backing by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (on "Someone Stole Gabriel's Horn"), Sun Ra and the Arkestra (on several tunes, including the fantastic "Old Man of the Mountain"), various members of the Blasters, as well as several solo-guitar tunes and an acapella version of "Death in the Morning" with gospel singer backup. The joy and energy that Alvin brings to these dusty old songs makes this album an absolute delight, and one which I can't recommend any more highly. Do check it out.

"Hitler reacts to Metallica recording with Lou Reed"

Beauty. Favorite line: "And I own White Light/White Heat."

(Via Boing Boing.)

The Mountain Goats

As much as I love that Elliott Smith cover of George Harrison's "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" that was over in the sidebar, it was there for over a year and needed to be replaced. So now it's the mysterious, haunting "Your Belgian Things" by the Mountain Goats, from a 2004 radio session on KEXP.

I just read a pretty wonderful piece at The Atlantic by tMG's John Darnielle about the genesis of the song "Dance Music" that I highly recommend. "So this is what the volume knob's for" - wow.

Dubious record reviews from Archive.org

Following on my lost stories discovery yesterday at Internet Archive, I made three more unexpected finds. During the late 1990s I wrote three record reviews for Green Mountain Music Review, a one-man shop operated by the mysterious J. Laramie. Sometime this century the site disappeared, and even the Google webpage cache brought nothing, and I feared the reviews were lost - I didn't even have a hard copy, having written them on an office computer from two employers ago. Have no fear, Internet Archive to the rescue:

The Outnumbered, Surveying the Damage
Various Artists, Suburbia (soundtrack)
Various Artists, The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation Compact Disc

I had a lot of fun writing record reviews back in the day, and even toyed with launching my own music site (dubbed Hearing Voices, after the Galaxie 500 song), which I created a beta version of but never launched. Seeing the reviews is a pleasant glimpse back at the person I used to be. And still am, to some extent - after reading that review again, I might even burn some Suburbia tunes on to my iPod, where Outnumbered and Lounge Ax tunes already reside.

Lyric

The only thing I want that shines
Is to be king, there in your eyes
To be your only shiny thing

- Tom Waits, "Shiny Things"

John Darnielle, the once and future author

John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats (one of my favorite songwriters, and whose best songs are perfect little fictions in themselves) talks about his not-so-forthcoming debut novel.

The other main difference between making Mountain Goats albums and writing a book for Darnielle seems to be the pace. An astoundingly sharp and prolific songwriter, Darnielle is finding it far more difficult to wrap up his second literary production.

"I'm working on it really slowly, and at this point, I expect to finish it when I'm 80 or something because I'm being really meticulous about revising it and am really ambitious about it," he explains.

I've already marked this down on my to-read list...for 2147. I'll be 82 then, and hope I'll still be coherent enough to read it. His 33 1/3 book Master Of Reality remains on my wishlist, despite my ignorance of almost all things Sabbath.

(Via Largehearted Boy.)

What I listened to on my way to work today

The iPod shuffle-played the following for my walk from train to office...

Giant Sand, "Fields of Green"
Terrific song (admired recently here) that has me seriously considering getting reacquainted with Howe Gelb's eccentric genius. In other words, I'm thinking of buying my first Giant Sand album since 1994.

Yo La Tengo, "(Straight Down To) The Bitter End"
Second-best song on Electr-O-Pura, after the gorgeous "Pablo and Andrea."

Scruffy the Cat, "Bus Named Desire"
From the band's final album, Moons of Jupiter, which in retrospect seems like a stab at commercial success for the band (produced by Jim Dickinson, it's significantly smoother than Tiny Days, my favorite of theirs). Sadly, that success eluded them, and they broke up shortly afterward.

Tom Waits, "2:19"
Waits gutbucket blues at its finest, from Orphans. Fortunately the title refers only to a train, and not to the song's running time - two minutes and nineteen seconds would be cruelly brief for a song this rich.

"So I’ve kind of pulled a John Lennon house-husband thing."

Magnet Magazine has an interesting interview with lo-fi icon F.M. Cornog, who performs under the nom de band East River Pipe. Sounds like he's my kind of guy.

How is fatherhood treating you?
It's good. But this is why it's taken so, so long to put out a record. When you have a kid, you can’t do whatever you used to do. I don't want to feel guilty or have her harbor any resentment against me. Like, "Dad was always doing music up there in his room with his stupid mini studio. That was always more important than I was." So I've kind of pulled a John Lennon house-husband thing. Although I'm still working at Home Depot, it's turned the music thing into kinda like a guerilla-war operation. I kinda peck, peck, and then I run away. Then I come back and peck, peck, peck again. Plant a few explosives on the railway, blow 'em up, then retreat into the woods.

Well, at least the Nazis haven't found you yet.
I used to have hours and hours and hours of uninterrupted time when I was in Queens and in the early years when I came out here, around the time of Gasoline Age. But ever since then I haven't had those long, long periods of time. You know, I like to be present for my family, my wife and my daughter, and spend time with them. I still love doing the music, but it really comes, I would say, second or third now. Maybe when she gets older and gets sick of me and doesn't want me around I can get back into it again.

My writing comes second or third, too, for the same reason.

Brrrrrr

During weather like this, I always think of these lines from the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York":

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind blows right through you
It's no place for the old

Walking north from my train wasn't too bad this morning, but when I briefly turned west, the wind all but "blew right through me." I could swear I felt my forehead start to freeze solid. Thank goodness I could turn north again after only one block. In this weather, Chicago's no place for the old. Or the young either.

Five Eight

Recently I was quite pleased to see The Angriest Man, the 1993 album from Athens, Georgia band Five Eight, finally turn up on iTunes. Fifteen years ago I taped the excellent leadoff track, "My Sister Is So Strange", from a radio broadcast and have enjoyed it ever since. I downloaded the song to have a digital copy (I was never able to find the album on CD) and now realize I'll probably download the rest of the album too. The band has a new album, Your God Is Dead to Me Now, coming out on March 29, and the title track is quite good (including what is certainly the best whistling on a rock song since Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks") and suggests that the band hasn't lost a thing since I first stumbled across them.

Hallelujah!

New Feelies album coming April 12! MP3 of "Should Be Gone" already available! Aging non-hipster swoons over band he didn't fully appreciate the first time around!

Richard Thompson, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"

To me, the very best song lyrics are both poetic and tell a story. And one of the finest examples of this is Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning". While Thompson's guitar work here is typically wonderful, what really makes the song great are the lyrics:

Says Red Molly to James, That's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such a like
Says James to Red Molly, My hat's off to you
That's a Vincent Black Lightning 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes, it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled around behind
And down to Box Hill they'd ride

Says James to Red Molly, Here's a ring for your right hand
But I tell you in earnest, I'm a dangerous man
For I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm twenty-one years, I might make twenty-two
And I don't mind dying but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down Red Molly, called Sargeant McRae
For we've taken young James Agee for armed robbery
Shotgun blast in his chest left nothing inside
Come down, Red Molly, to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
He says, I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, In my opinion there's nothing in this world
Beats a '52 Vincent and a red-headed girl
Now, Nortons and Indians and Grieveses won't do
They don't have a soul like Vincent '52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Said, I've no further use for these
I see angels and ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

Song of the Day

Yesterday in the car, Maddie was whistling what I think was this very song. Obviously it's one that's commonly associated with the circus, but it occurred to me that I had no idea of either the title or composer. Then this morning, not even 30 seconds of websearch revealed it's "Entry of the Gladiators" by Julius Fučík. I love you, Internet. (Or, as Julie and I like to joke, "Thank you, Al Gore!")

Dumptruck, "Walk Into Mirrors"

Live 1986 recording, from the band's basement rehearsal space. Interesting to hear this great song stripped down, without the Don Dixon studio production sheen. Mind you, I've always loved that sheen, but this is a refreshing alternative.

Listening: Giant Sand

Giant Sand: "Fields of Green"

Terrific return to form from Howe Gelb's Giant Sand, from the forthcoming Blurry Blue Mountain on Fire Records. Gelb ponders aging and losing one's heroes to shuffling, subdued instrumentation. Giant Sand was one of my favorite bands during the early 1990s, when I was mesmerized by the albums Giant Sandwich, Long Stem Rant and Swerve, but though I loved loved loved the first three songs on 1994's Glum, I was sorely disappointed that the rest of the album deteriorated into aimless self-indulgence. Then after Joey Burns and John Convertino - one of the best rhythm sections around - left the band to make Calexico their full-time gig, I mostly lost track of Giant Sand. But "Fields of Green" has suddenly revived my interest, and I'll probably be reacquainting myself with Gelb's eccentric vision very soon.

Tony and the Nevilles

I first knew Tony Fitzpatrick as a poet, specifically for Bum Town, his book-length ode to his beloved hometown of Chicago. It wasn't until after I read (and loved) that book that I realized Fitzpatrick is even better known as a visual artist, specializing in collage pieces that draw heavily on Chicago history and also incorporate his own vast collection of matchbook covers and other ephemera.

I follow Tony on Facebook and noticed his recent status update in which he mentioned that he happened to be working (that is, creating an artwork) while cranking the Neville Brothers at high volume. I slowly began to consider how much Tony's work reminded me of New Orleans folk art and then, prompted by that status update, I fetched from my shelf the Nevilles' Yellow Moon, a terrific album that I hadn't listened to in quite a while. As I glanced at the lovely cover art (shown above), I was struck by how much it resembled Tony's work. So I checked the liner notes, and there it was: "Cover Illustration: Tony Fitzpatrick." One of my favorite artists, and a favorite album, intimately and unexpectedly linked. Quite the serendipitous moment.

Just what the world needs, another...

Over at the Two Dollar Radio blog, Grace Krilanovich has some kind thoughts on bass players, both in general (" Guileless, a little bit mysterious, endearingly dorky; if they know what’s best for them they’ll be lurking in the shadows next to the drummer.") and the dual-bass band Dos of Mike Watt and Kira Roessler ("It’s a small music, origins stained with grief, and maybe a kind of romance too.")

If I was in a band (a big stretch, since I don't play any musical instruments) I'd definitely be the bass player. I don't have the pipes to be the singer or the charisma to be guitarist, and the coordination required to have three or four limbs operating independently yet still in sync that's required of a drummer is far beyond me. But I could probably (eventually) master playing the same bass chords over and over again, though I'd never be more than competent, nowhere near the league of Watt, Flea or Entwistle.

That subject line comes from a college-era memory that always gives me a chuckle. One of the record stores in Champaign, Record Swap, had a stairwell that was always plastered with flyers, primarily of musicians looking for bands, or vice versa. The one flyer that I remember best was from a bass player looking for a band, which had "BASS PLAYER" in bold letters and a picture of Jimi Hendrix. But the guy also added, in a wonderful bit of self-deprecation, several other words and a dialogue balloon, so that it looked like Hendrix was saying "Just what the world needs, another...BASS PLAYER." Priceless. If I had a band back then, I would have hired that guy on the spot.

Epitonic returns!

This is wonderful news. When we went suburban in 2000 and I inevitably drifted away from my earlier indie rock mania, Epitonic helped keep me at least marginally current in my listening. Most of the music that I first discovered during the Aughts - especially Ted Leo, M. Ward and Death Cab For Cutie - was via Epitonic. I'm not sure I'll embrace the site quite like before - it was basically my soundtrack while I worked from home for a few years, and I can't stream audio or download at my current job - but it will still be nice to have it back when I need a fix.

Ted Leo goes Broadway

Ted Leo And The Pharmacists -
"Bottled In Cork" (Official Video)
from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Beauty. Favorite line: "He died because he didn't believe in the power of punk."

Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"

Howlin' Wolf, 1965. This man was the absolute epitome of cool. I just found out that I missed the centenary of his birth - June 10, 1910, so sharing this vintage video is my way of rectifying my oversight. This song is a bit strange - Wolf identifies it as "Smokestack Lightning" and the instrumentation and melody are definitely that song, but the lyrics are different, sounding more akin to "Mystery Train."

David Masciotra

David Masciotra is a local guy (grew up in Lansing, went to college in Joliet and is now a grad student at Valparaiso) who has written the intriguing Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. Right now he's doing a blog tour to promote the book, with his first stop at Big Other this past Monday and upcoming stops here at Pete Lit (probably next week), What To Wear During an Orange Alert? and Mel Bosworth's blog, among others. He's also doing a reading tomorrow at Revolution Books (1103 N. Ashland Ave. in Chicago) at 7 p.m.

I haven't read the book yet but have heard nothing but good things about it, so it's definitely on my list. I've long been an admirer of Springsteen (I even owned his Nebraska LP in high school) if not an actual fan - I might have become one were it not for my freshman year roommate in college, who was not only a Springsteen fanatic but also a grade-A prick whom I genuinely hated. Every time I think of Springsteen I can't help also thinking of my roommate, whose memory will forever taint my impressions of the artist. I know that's not a rational reason to not embrace Springsteen during the past 25 years, but that's just how I am. Maybe Masciotra's book will draw me back into the fold.