Why Reflect When You Can Refract?

 

 

There’s something to be said about getting old.

There’s many things to be said about getting old, actually, a glut of things. Sift through long enough, and you’ll discover a diamond. Whether the effort is worth all the agate is entirely up to you.

I am old. I am older than I ever imagined. At age ten, age thirty seemed impossible. The day I turned thirty, I sat with my mother and siblings in a funeral home. 

This is all very depressing. No one should type through tears. And what a woman staring fifty in the creepy peepers has to say about aging is nowhere near as probably interesting, as potentially enriching, as what a woman sauntering down decade seven has to say. 

Especially when that woman is Kim Gordon.

People marvel over Kim Gordon at her advanced age making such audacious, challenging (call it what it is, young) music and leave the scary part unexamined. Which is how it probably should be. I won’t be the one to tear the tarp off the beating heart. It’s not my tender spot to expose. 

“Joyous” is one word of the many Kim Gordon has used to describe the songs on “Play Me,” the diamond descriptor. (“Jagged” and “glitch-y” are fine, if flourite.) And when I set aside a half hour to listen—which I’ve done three times in the past two days—the insect-ridden noise-hop party does indeed leave me feeling cheerier. The breezy horn sample in the title track, the plucked feathers of “Dirty Tech,” the phases of abrasion, the realization that Kim Gordon is the girl with the look and the hook…it’s all good, except the parts that are great. 

Play Me, like No Home Record and The Collective before it, is so much more than off-kilter speak-sing over trip-trap beats. Her vocal performance, for example, is better here than it's been in years. But it’s like Marvin Gaye’s cousin said: “The dumb are mostly intrigued by the drum.”

(Dave Grohl plays drums on “Busy Bee.” He’s getting old too.)

Kim Gordon at the 9:30 Club, 3/15/2022

Sleater-Kinney played The Anthem in Washington D.C. two days after my 42nd birthday, with two months left in 2019. Once live concert fiends, Trick and I were reduced (largely by choice) to a couple shows a year, maybe, for most of the past decade. 2020 arrived, and reduction became the order of the day. While no one likes being told what to do, sometimes it's just best. Developing agoraphobia isn't best, nor is gaining weight, but staying home and upright and alive is. 

The concert experience seemed like a relic of a bygone era. The driving, the waiting, the babbling, the drinking, the sweating, the aching, the clapping, the yelling, the connection...something we used to do, like eating in a restaurant or attending a baseball game. Money and energy were treasures to be saved up for nights in crimson fleece. 

The night of 3/15/2022 passed the feel test. 

Because Kim G. is the hero. 

Because you can't spell "risking Covid" without "Kim G." (Just erase half of the m.)

***

My body showed no signs of future trouble as I slipped into faux leather leggings and fitted Snoopy tee, de-wrinkled for the occasion. Over the previous ten hours, I'd treated it well enough--coffee, water, homemade breakfast muffin. There was an inadvertent inhalation of perfume, but it's expected I'll always allow a baserunner or two. 

Twenty years after our first trip to the 9:30 Club, the changes along the route are gradual and abrupt in unequal measure. Boarded-up storefronts and litter-strewn sidewalks sit across from signs announcing the imminent construction of luxury condos. A ratty convenience store at one end of this block, a pristine Safeway at one end of that block. Gentrification hovers 'round Georgia Avenue like a heaving storm cloud taking up two-thirds of the sky. At least Wonder Chicken is still at the intersection of Georgia and Rittenhouse. Will I ever sample its wares? Likely not. Better to appreciate from afar, like a would-be lover betrothed to another. 

Pedestrian traffic at the six o'clock hour is steady and smart; vehicular traffic, not so much. 

The area around the 9:30 Club has undergone quite a bit of change in those twenty years, as well. The parking lot has moved a few blocks north, across from Banneker Recreation Center. There are folks in the bleachers, folks running the track, and one guy walking the track at a pace slower than that maintained by Trick and I as we head south to the club, past a yoga studio, past parking garages, past Howard Plaza Towers, on and on until the dingy comforts of cracked sidewalk and amateur graffiti signal our destination. 

We entered the venue mere minutes after doors opened at seven. The merch table offered a few shirts and vinyl of No Home Record, the masterpiece Kim Gordon was finally touring behind, three years after its release. A barrier separating spectator from stage beckoned moreso, especially the empty space just to right of center. The mask mandate in the District was lifted at the beginning of March, but all of the staff and at least half of the crowd wore some form of face covering. (Trick and I were the only ones rocking N95s that I saw.) 

I took my first chocolate-y, caramel-y, cereal-y sip of Murphy's Irish Stout at 7:15 and took my final sip at 10:30, right after the lights went up for good. Now tell me who the Sonic Nurse is?

We scanned the older-skewing crowd behind us and amused ourselves guessing a person's favorite Sonic Youth album based on the band shirt they wore. White VU and Nico tee? EVOL. Black VU and Nico tee? Sister. Pixies shirt, clearly Dirty. Korn? Rather Ripped.

Bill Nace took the stage at 8:30, seated six feet from a drum set placed to the far left of the stage (first time I've ever seen such). If you've ever wondered about the testimony of the Gods and Goddesses of Atari if ever called upon in the purely hypothetical case of Todd Rogers vs. The Gaming Universe...if you've even half-considered the audible reckoning of C-tier deities under oath...if you've ever craved the sensation of thunderous reprimand for shunning simple mathematics, overlooking obvious clues, and besmirching the good name of Wabbit, well, the Gods and Goddesses of Atari testified on Tuesday night. Through Bill Nace, who may or may not have ever played a video game, the Gods and Goddesses of Atari unleashed forty years of well-oiled wrath. Onlookers drooped and drooled, choked and staggered--and justice was done.

Kim and her three partners in crime took the stage--friendly, wary--at 9:30. A music stand blocked our view of the grand dame somewhat, meaning Trick would capture only clips and pics on his phone, rather than video of a full song. The set up was otherwise fantastic, with plenty of space between band members. Kim moved frequently and wisely. A month shy of 69, stunning in dress shirt, shorts and sensible shoes, her power stemmed from her essential vulnerability. She's fragile and dangerous in the manner of glass, although it's easy for the audience to just marvel at the illusion of tesserae. 

 Ten songs (the entirety of No Home Record, and the single "Grass Jeans") doesn't sound like much for a concert, but in this case it constituted the ideal set. Selecting highlights is like choosing a favorite child, or at least it would be if I had, or even liked, children. The run of "Air BNB," "Paprika Pony," and "Murdered Out" was pretty wham-bam-goddamn, and I'll now always associate the first of that three with Alex Ovechkin scoring his historic 767th career goal. The encore of "Hungry Baby" and "Grass Jeans" fed and clothed us in joyful noise. If insight seems anathema to the Kim Gordon creative mission (I read Girl In A Band with trembling hands, sure that at any second the book would vanish from my grasp before I finished the final page), onslaught fills the gap nicely. 

"That was Kim Gordon! That was Kim fucking Gordon!"

The young woman behind us spoke for me. She let out my every suppressed scream, my every quelled imprecation. The concert experience still means something to me. 

It always will.

Beauty Lies In the Lives

(Wherein I give my readers the fucking link like a Legend Of Zelda porno.)

Two chapters away from finishing novel number four, it helps to have other projects settling on the side, patiently waiting for some sublime occurrence of frustration, aggravation or out-out ennui, at which point a game will ensue (Rock-Paper-Scissors, Odds and Evens, perhaps a thumb war if the intermission's run especially long) and I will find myself ranking Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes...appraising another book-to-film adaptation...picking my favorite Sonic Youth live shows by era....

Wasn't my idea, y'all. But 2020 wants me to do more than snapping pictures of ducks in between creating root beer floats out of imagination and aspiration.

My all-time favorite racket-gang's had a pretty busy year, for being out of commission since 2011. Started a Bandcamp page to provide "a home to live SY recordings and unreleased, self-released or stray SY recordings." Celebrated the 30th anniversary of their most important album. Displayed the common sense and decency not required of great artists, but hey, great if it's there. Continued along the path of intelligent compassion by participating in a fundraiser.

SY's first-ever show in Portugal is well-known along gig collectors as the "Blastic Scene" bootleg (and is among the sets available on the aforementioned Bandcamp page) and boasts a killer setlist: nineteen songs from seven albums, starting with "Cotton Crown" and concluding with "Brother James." (Far from perfect, but I'd put up with hearing "In The Mind Of The Bourgeois Reader" three times in a row just to hear "Theresa's Sound-World" once.) If you look back at the Youth's concert history, their adherence (obstinace, some might say) is pretty admirable. When they played to promote an album, they played said album, a few select others from the vault, and rarely deviated. Unadventurous, eh, but it meant that after a few shaky first gigs to chase off the dust and spray off the rust, man became machine, blasting star showers.

(The most annoying misconception about Sonic Youth is they were no fun. I saw the band live 58 times, and the vast majority of those times, I saw them alive. Wide and high and alive. Get me?)

"Would you consider the Portugal show one of the best from that era?" Patrick asked. I said, sure, but then again, I've heard a lot of SY concerts, three times as many as I've seen.

"I'd love to see you put together a list of what you think the best by era are."

 So would I, sir.

1981-1985
These eras are determined by Patrick and I, DBA "The J&P Show." They would be different if we were discussing the band's recorded history, rather than their live history.


11/20/1983-Trier, Germany-Exhaus
1/5/1985-Movaje Desert, CA
8/1/1985-Cleveland, OH-Stache's

Baby Youth. Pre-SS Beat Patrol. Raw, rugged, raucous. Ruckus was brought. Mothers were fucked, and fucked right back. The Gila Monster Jamboree is impervious to nitroglycerin. The Ohio date marked Steve Shelley's first performance with the group away from the safety (?) of NYC. His presence on drums takes the band into the next phase.

1986-1989

4/12/1986-Austin, TX-Continental Club
9/15/1987-Chapel Hill, NC-Cat's Cradle
11/5/1988-Chicago, IL-Cabaret Metro

Lotta C's, wow. The Austin show was made available through the Sonic Death fan club, and the Chicago show is up on BC. All three of these represent the "golden trilogy" period superbly. Even just a decently-recorded show from this time puts me in the mood to make popcorn the hard way.

1990-1994

8/11/1990-Philadelphia, PA-Trocadero
8/17/1990-Hollywood, CA-The Palladium 
9/24/1992-San Francisco, CA-The Warfield

Oh the 1990s. My life turned Sonic, right at the start. My personal record of zero broken bones would've ended somewhere in here, if I'd the means to quash the concert cherry. Wild, wild, wild. SY kicked an inordinate amount of ass at numerous Philly shows, venue irrelevant. Why, couldn't tell you. This was their so-called "commercial" era, when Nirvana made people believe like-minded acts were also salable. Flawed logic, for sure, but the records are still great--and the concerts greater still.

Also, I am a sucker for banter, for all the introductions/observations/jokes/pleas, and the Hollywood show is an amazing admixture of "talk" and "walk." 

1995-2000

4/7/1996-Dusseldorf, Germany-Philipshalle
5/28/1998 & 5/29/1998-Los Angeles, CA-Veterans Wadsworth Theater  
2/27/1999 -New York, NY-Hammerstein Ballroom

The last gasp before the Gear Gear Theft. Before some douchenozzles went full-throttle and left the band without any equipment for the next show. Luckily, said show was a festival, featuring many Sonic Lifers whose generosity surpassed expectation. You think those pilfering chumps have ever received such largesse? Life's weird so, maybe, but I'm doubtful.

The German show is also known as "The Easter Show" and also the greatest Sonic Youth concert ever. Setlist is mostly offerings from Jet Set and Washing Machine, distinguished by the sheer number of songs whose recorded peak was reached that night in front of several thousand Germans. "Starfield Road" comes to the fork and paints each tine gold; "Washing Machine" is too good for clothes; "The Diamond Sea" is actually several different gemstones, loupe depending.

The first LA show has the band's blessing, but kids, that second show is every bit its equal. If you're like me, and regard A Thousand Leaves as the group's artistic apex, it gets no better.

The '99'er is a wonderful example of a "between albums" performance, snatching a little from (almost) every bowl. The staggering cover of "Blonde Redhead" isn't up to the original, but it's Sonic Youth doing DNA.

2001-2011 

8/3/2002-New Orleans, LA-Tipitina's
7/1/2006-Portland, OR-Roseland Ballroom
8/12/2011-Brooklyn, NY-Williamsburg Waterfront

It's not how you start, it's how you finish, and Sonic Youth's final show on their home turf is more than the answer to a trivia question. Things were still hunky dory, at least in the minds of schlubs like me. We hadn't clue one the end was nigh.

No, that's a lie. We (meaning, me and a few of my friends) thought even while the show was ongoing that we were witness to something wonderful--and weird. Undeniably, on both counts. Look at the setlist! Then listen!

21st century SY punched up real pretty. The Tipitina's recording checks every box for me, and circled a couple for good measure. On the heels of a lackluster showing in Seattle, Portland '06 was and is everything I adored about the concert experience. I miss it, or rather some aspects. Circumstances conspire, and truths must be faced. I think that's why I documented so much of it, why I honor the compulsion to revisit those days...to prevent the mist from feeling comfortable in any role other than "guest."

Liver Than Fried Onions

58 shows attended, 230+ shows collected, two books written--my Sonic Youth live history is unremarkable and impressive. Their first gig was in 1981; the final, 2011. My first was 1998; the final, 2011. There's a lot I've missed out on, even with bootleg trading and lossless audio sites.

So a list of the best SY live songs wasn't uppermost in my admittedly hyper-inhabited mind.

Blame Patrick, whose Murray Street revisit inspired an opinion that inspired an idea. There's more important writing assignments on my desk/hospital overbed (which aren't actually important), but a persistent Patrick is rarely thwarted.

My top 10 Sonic songs and this list do not match up, not close, and that's a testament to the potency of a live performance.

10. "Karenology"
       Changed her birth name after a few days on her own, this thunderclap from three states away. Exhausted of pipe organs and choirs, she refurbished the nearest God shack with hotwired banjos and cold-blooded percussion. I worshiped duly.

9. "Catholic Block"
     SY bringing back Sister faves in the 21st century! "Catholic Block" fared second-best, preserving the frenzy without sacrificing the mastery.

8. "Shaking Hell"
     An aged shell, an abraded skull. Silence is golden, so a silver vixen's song is brutally inevitable. Misshapen, 'cause mishaps happen.

7. "Hey Joni"
     So if "Eric's Trip" is the Taj Mahal (best seen in pictures) and "Rain King" is the Colosseum (beauty in ruination), "Hey Joni" is the Grand Canyon. 'Cause I really wanna fall into that bitch.

6. "White Kross"
     SY bringing back Sister faves in the 21st century! "White Kross" fared best, preserving the God without sacrificing the Jesus.

5. "Expressway To Yr Skull"
     Twenty-two strings, one goal: crisscross the nearest ocean without arousing the unwanted attentions of the relevant Coast Guard or the secretly-coveted notice of the boldest sharks. Roads, like love affairs, are best enjoyed in the mind.

4. "Starfield Road"
     Happy Easter! Fondant is a French word, meaning "removing one's panties without ripping the fabric." The worst version of "Starfield Road" is the best version of vertigo.

3. "Rain On Tin"
    Poetry and pandemonium. Holy and godless. A mesmeric ash pile in the middle of a wobbling Babylon. (Stare long enough, strong enough, hear the faintest whispers.)

2. "The Sprawl"/"Cross The Breeze"
     Peanut butter doesn't need jelly, necessarily, but it really wants it. On bread, on a joyous summer day, in tender hands headed for a grateful mouth.

1. "The Diamond Sea" 
     A caress that sends a heart skipping. A tad frightening, a Tad enthralling. Whatever's forever isn't of human concern, so whether a five minute edit or a twenty-five minute edification, whether studio or club, this is ultimate Sonic experience.

Thank you for reading my current diversion. Now watch the Easter show.

Book Review: Girl In a Band by Kim Gordon (2015)

(You can't borrow my copy; trust me, it's well-guarded.)

"Men's memoirs are about answers; women's memoirs are about questions."--ISABEL ALLENDE

What's it like to want to be a girl in a band?

Kim Gordon.  Not a special name.  Doesn't take up much space.  No uncommon letters were harmed in the making of. 

Names are for tombstones, baby.  Take that superficial way of thinking outside and give it a goose egg.

Kim Gordon has been my hero since 1990.  Since I saw the video for "Kool Thing," the song that was surely the beginning of the end for Sonic Youth, once kings and queens of the American underground.  To have that look, to be a component in that sound.  To know those people, to be that person.  Slim, toned, gorgeous.  Sharp, witty, genius.

I totally wanna.  I know so.

Ever since the first rumblings of a Kim Gordon memoir, it's been at the top of my "must-read" list.  And good lawd, did I; one sitting, five hours.  I devoured Girl In a Band. 

So you got the name-dropping, the mental illness, the infidelity, but really, the most scandalous thing about Girl In a Band is that one of the most singular American artists of the past forty years even deigned to grace us with a significant account of her life and times.  Gordon is an insightful writer, free of stylistic quirks.  She is more concerned with breadth than depth, more adept at offering revelatory flashes than holding the light on one spot for long periods of time. 

Kim's memories of her family are touching and non-exploitative.  Her love for her resourceful mother and academic father is clear.  Her older brother, however, is the one that will be impossible to forget.

Dedicated SY fans know Keller Gordon as the co-star of a classic image inserted into the booklet of the band's first album, and the inspiration for "Cinderella's Big Score," one of the standout tracks from 1990's Goo.  After reading GIAB, everyone will know him as the most profound influence on young Kim Gordon, the person arguably most responsible in shaping the woman beloved by thousands (shit, dare I say millions?) worldwide for her bravery and savvy.  Unable to compete with her big bro's outsized personality, she retreated, spinning an opaque cocoon around herself. 


                               ------------------------------------------------------------------
In all my trips to the West (most of them revolving around SY) I've never felt the pull of California's suffusive air.  Well, that's not entirely true; I am asthmatic, after all.  But I've always preferred the density of New York City.  Something about California has always struck me as laughably insecure.  Kim has a more intimate knowledge of the so-called Golden State, though, and it was impossible for me to avoid being sucked into her straightforward descriptions of the places she knew as home.  Equally impossible?  Avoiding sadness when reading about her disinterest in the city that Sonic Youth arguably encompassed with more intensity and intelligence than any other band.  Kim is hardly the first to have expressed disenchantment with the Disney-fied New York, to bemoan the Giuliani-led replacement of unprofitable fetidity with profitable fetidity, but damn, she makes it sound like there's absolutely nothing there for her anymore.  It's amazing for me to consider that, juxtaposed with my own excitement whenever I visit, how I lose myself so readily in the areas outside the touristy disaster known as Times Square, how I emerge out the other side with sharpened edges, ready to set and go…then again, I never knew the New York that the music of Sonic Youth knew.


                                   ----------------------------------------------------------
Reading her thoughts on select Sonic Youth songs turned me into the person who went three days without any solid food, was treated to a decadent night out at a Michelin-starred restaurant, then bitched afterward about how the creme brulee was "'loose."  Not just because she didn't speak on any of her miniature masterpieces from A Thousand Leaves, 'cause I really didn't expect that.(I guarantee I hold that album in higher regard than everyone actually involved in its creation.) But the insights we are treated to, from Confusion Is Sex to Washing Machine, only confirm my suspicions that if Kim had wanted to write primarily about Sonic Youth, she would have turned out one of the greatest music books ever.   Christ's sake, reading her thoughts about "Shaking Hell" made me want to listen to nothing but that song for an hour.  (Made it 45 minutes, which is almost an hour!)

If nothing else, maybe "Massage the History" will get its proper due now?  Eh?!

                                   -------------------------------------------------------------
Kim was born to be an artist--visual, auditory--but the eagerness to express is frequently wed with the fear of sticking out.  'Cause when you get noticed, you can be judged.  If you can be touched, you can be hit.  The lessons learned growing up with a seriously-ill sibling served Kim well as Sonic Youth's profile grew.  Was she cool, or cold?  Imperious or impassive?  Detached or determined?  All the questions bandied about by fans and media meant she maintained a degree of control.  How admirable.  Or?

"If you have to hide your hypersensitivity, are you really a 'strong woman'?" she asks in the one sentence that froze my eyes inside my head.  Of course!  You can't lay it all out there, not if you want to survive.  Picking and choosing what you show is the power.  How it's interpreted is beyond you, and cannot be allowed to diminish the strength.  Of course it's not!  You're letting others--men, specifically, the expectations laid upon women by a world run by men--dictate your image.  You're not a positive role model, you're playing it safe!

And on.

                                  -------------------------------------------------------------------
Prior to publication, click-bait articles Internet-wide suckered in the simples with Kim's passages concerning Courtney Love (she called her mentally ill!  And since this society doesn't understand or respect mental illness whatsoever, this is a horrible burn!), Billy Corgan (self-important rock star, nailed that one) and Lana Del Rey (whose cult attacked Kim over social media re: a potentially-insensitive half of a sentence that ended up not even making the finished book).  Thankfully, Girl In a Band is not packed with these "sexy" reflections. 

There's nothing, and I mean absolutely not a single standing-alone-like-the-cheese thing, sexy about the dissolution of the marriage between Kim and Thurston Moore, the super-tall, lanky Connecticut-bred dude with the hair falling over his eyes that she met and fell for in arty-as-fuck New York.  Before they were the golden couple of the indie-rock scene, before David Geffen, before diapers, before the big house in Mass, there was just Kim 'n' Thurston.  She was young, he was younger.  She thought maybe they could start a band and maybe write some songs and maybe a record and maybe maybe, he knew they could.  From that union of skepticism and faith came Sonic Youth.

The band I adore above all others, whose racket convinced me to keep writing, whose sole female member compelled me to believe that what I was writing was worthy of the world…of course one day they would end.  That didn't upset me.  What gnaws at me to this day, and likely will for most of the rest of my days, is that they called it quits due to something so…banal. 

Kim reserves a measure of compassion for her manchild ex-husband (she makes repeated references to his aptitude for fatherhood, which scores some serious points with this woman, anyway) but Kim is understandably merciless when it comes to "the other woman," this mysterious figure who materializes onto the scene like some super-ambitious Dementor, attempting to ingratiate herself into Kim's life before moving on to not one, but two other members of SY.  Kim graciously resisted the urge to boldface announce "I'M DROPKICKING THAT BITCH BACK INTO THE TWILIGHT ZONE NEXT TIME I SEE HER, YO" but make no mistake, the hatred is high. 

These are the "juicy" chapters, and goddamn is much of it hard to stomach.  I never thought of Thurston Moore as anything other than one of the great re-imaginers of his much-abused instrument, but taking in the many examples of his gross duplicity, the "darkness" that took over and separated him from his wife, his child, his band…you know, I could have gone my entire life without reading about what caused the Moore marriage to "combust."  But I doubt that Kim Gordon could have gone her entire life without writing about it, and that is what matters.  The amelioration of suffering. 

(Mind you, there were moments my heart went out to Thurston.  It must be horrifying to realize you just wrote and recorded an album as devastatingly trash as Demolished Thoughts.)

                                 -----------------------------------------------------------
I think it's worthwhile to ask:  if called upon to write at length about my life, could I write as bluntly and boldly as Kim Gordon?  She shows no interest in romanticizing or de-romanticizing anything, least of all herself.  I honestly don't know.  She makes me want to, though.  Frequently--too frequently--as of late I have found myself ready to put pen to paper, prepared to bleed cold red everywhere, when a sudden paralytic attack hits.  Forces invisible and incomprehensible render me useless.  Soon enough, I am convinced of my utter and complete futility--as a writer, as a friend, a daughter, a lover.  The attack passes, and my mind is mine again.  This can take as long as two hours, as little as twenty minutes.  What isn't variable is my fear.  Past be damned; I just know, this time of all the times is the one, this isn't just mud, this is quicksand, and there's no hope now. 

Forget therapy; forget medication and meditation.  The homilies and bromides that worked for others simply will not work for me.  The next time those demons, those enemies of the expressive soul come for my throat, I'll go for theirs.  Cold red all over the page, everywhere.


                                     --------------------------------------------------------
A gaze at the "Autobiography" section of any bookstore can induce depression pretty quickly.  Whether it's some "reality personality" who was paid more than the worth of the average life to put their name and face to a book that someone else wrote, or a blustering cultural/political maven who exists solely to remind me that a full 50% of America's citizenry is 100% unfit to procreate, it's hard to imagine the memoir as a work of art.  But Girl In a Band qualifies.  It is called-for.  It is brilliant.  It assures the questions will keep being asked.

3-D Like Me: El Rostro De La Muerte

Lee Ranaldo and the Dust
Last Night On Earth
10/7/2013

Help Me Out A Li'l Bit Here:
Lee Ranaldo--vocals, guitar, bells, vibraphone
Alan Licht--guitars, bells
Tim Lüntzel--bass
Steve Shelley--drums, bells, shaker

(Originally written on 5/2/2014)

On October 22nd, 2012, the calamitous storm that would become known as Hurricane Sandy began life as "Tropical Depression Eighteen." By the time of its dissipation in early November, Sandy would cause billions of dollars worth of damages in seven countries, on its way to claiming 286 casualties; of the 24 states affected, New York and New Jersey received some of the most devastating damages.  In Manhattan, Lee and family were relatively lucky to only be without power.  Unable to do much else, he stayed inside and, by candlelight, played guitar.  And played some more guitar.
From these sessions of sorts would come two songs that eventually made it onto Last Night On Earth, including the heart-bracing title track.  That's what creative people do.  Uncertainty and upheaval do not quell their urge.

"Lecce, Leaving"--Lee Ranaldo's second singer-songwriter style album in two years retains the emotionalism of its predecessor while eschewing relative pithiness for sweeping experimental classic rock.  A considerable chunk of Lee's appeal is his voice, which is why as much as I love the tempestuous likes of East Jesus, verse/chorus/verse is a great look for the man who I would call the George Harrison of Sonic Youth if a thousand other unoriginal bloggers hadn't beaten me to the punch and spiked the hell out of it.  His tenor curls 'round sound, hitting the air like extruded gossamer, adding a measurable resonance to any song.

How 'bout my song, though?  "Jenn, Returning."  The fearless soul fights on and thus never perishes.  Much like the Dust's kick-up, a tune eager to beat me to near-death with my own heart, but hey, I was the one who removed it and handed it over to begin with.

"Key/Hole"--So far, so solid.  Thermal conduction is the energy transfer of choice today.  Connection, and reconnection, is so vital for me, for all.

I've been planning much, and planning to fail besides, so anytime I am led to yet another door, I still feel my heart jump inside my chest (I put it back when the last song ended) and I can hear the blood whirring in my ears.  Because what is behind that door is a new room.  Hopefully one with holes cut into the walls for me to look beyond.

"Home Chds"--What's home, though?  Is it something you share?  Can a person be alone and still be home?

The song chooses to sidestep such pointless existential queries and go right for the inspirational gusto:  You know what you are capable of achieving.  Get it out.  These are non-fatal blows you're absorbing.

"The Rising Tide"--Blissed-out prismatic reaction stands in sharp contrast to my reality.  Staring outside the window of my room is like checking out the same old stock footage, day in night out. Apartment buildings to the left, obscured by several large trees of almost-absurd overgrowth.  Below, parking spaces, some filled and some not, all matched with coin depositories jutting up from the pavement.  Across, more brick buildings with holes cut into their sides.  Despite the distressing lack of variety, I can't help but gaze and gaze during breaks from patching up my skiff (the one item I absolutely could not allow to languish in a storage unit). 

"I don't want to let you drown."

Even walking outside has become tedious, and I've only been at it for a month.  I do it for several reasons:  it helps with losing weight (nearly 50 pounds since last summer), the dog demands the exercise, and on occasion, stepping purposefully around this redneck haven does actually spark my imagination.  Mainly the sounds are what do the trick--the bleats and scurries of the local park life; the splashing as said life makes its way hither and yon where my kind dare not tread; hell, even the exhaust-belching cars and obstreperous children can give me useful ideas.  (By "useful" I of course mean anything that does not at some stage involve picking a brat up in a fireman's carry and throwing them through a lattice fence.)

"Last Night On Earth"--For my last night on the planet, I hope to spend less than ten seconds total gazing out of a window.  Why not climb to the top of a church masonry spire, shooing away all the birds so that I and I alone may appreciate the limitless sky?  Why not recline on sidewalks raised from age and flip through my special, "sprocket holes edition" photo album?

I'm scared that I would do nothing extraordinary, thanks to my circumspect nature.  (Delay before gain, you'll never get your hands dirty that way.)  In a universe of instability and insanity, the last thing I want is to know exactly when the lights go out for good.

"Life is so short....Don't try to make it on your own."

I am ashamed of what I have become.  A fundamentally good person, who has much to offer, but who is nevertheless an abject failure rejected by almost her entire family.  I would spend my last night on Earth apologizing to the people who do love me for ultimately proving unworthy.

"By the Window"--  Time gurgles on.  Grind on down.

The songs here so frequently start out struggling with the built-in autofocus.  Acclimation is the key, see.

Lee gives well-soaked glances at the present, rather than ogling at the past.

"Late Descent #2"--The plunge is continuous; slow and turbulent.  The extent of the agonizing declension defies all attempts at measurement.

So why not just immerse yo'self in the Ren Faire vibe happening?  Never would you hear that on any SY wreck-hard.  Just picturing Lee decked out in a feathered bard's hat, green silk vest and binding leather trousers is enough to get a person through a day and a half.

"Ambulancer"--Scratching an itch can feel so goddamn satisfying.

Okay, for all my intellectual blunderbusses who find themselves surrounded by cap guns, pay attention, 'cause the fuzzy power trip I'm currently on has me in the mood to share some wisdom.

There is no such thing as a lost cause--only one that has been misplaced.

Where one hears a wolf, another hears a lamb.  So if you need to cry out, cry out.

Believe in the compassion of others and the passion inside yourself.

Mankind is a remarkably supple beast.

You are the hero of the scenario.

"Blackt Out"--Black doubt warps the mind.  If only "riptide resister" were a paying position!  Wage gap narrowed considerably.

At eleven and a half minutes, "Blackt Out" is the Snuffleupagus of Dust Street:  large, hirsute, a bit moody but ultimately sweet-mannered.  It is, furthermore and most importantly, a brilliant way to go out.



As for me, well, I'm finished with flipping myself ass over teakettle trying to make people understand my situation.  How many different ways can a person explain that they don't want to die, but after two years of diminishing returns, they've lost the ability to imagine a tolerable future for themselves?

I require no lectures about the value of life. I have spent many hours in awe of the value of life.  Of its brevity and its intensity.  Of the shame that is wasting life.

The key is to be less concerned about receding power and more in tune with the power inherent in recession.  Then, one can hope to improve their station.

Can I do that?  Can I really do that?  Is it possible this whole time I've been fearing the worst, I've actually been preparing myself to burst through the chrysalis?  Kinda...late, isn't it?

I ain't exactly psyched to die.  I am struggling to remake the mess I have made.  Through art, we are shown the infinite possibilities inside of a finite life.  With maximum effort and the willingness to risk all, present tension can become past tense.  A life of greater distinction can be lived. 

3-D Like Me: Drenched In Light

Body/Head
Coming Apart
9/10/2013

Help Me Out A Li'l Bit Here:
Kim Gordon:  vocals, guitar
Bill Nace:  guitar

(Originally written 10/22/2013)

Coming Apart is the debut album from two immaculately-matched meteorologists who previously worked over the cable access air.  It is also a pretty good description of life, right now.

My initial plan upon begrudgingly returning to my hometown was to stay with my Mom in the house now owned by her oldest daughter.  Unfortunately, I was forbidden from moving in for a reason that I will not mention here because it makes someone--not me--look very bad.  I took to social media and voiced my displeasure, which is never a bad idea.  Fortunately, another of my siblings was able and willing to take me in.  Unfortunately, the arrangement lasted only a month until they suddenly needed to relocate and I was unable to follow. 

I was allowed to stay at Mom's place for a few days while looking for a new place to stay.  I was facing a life on the streets, in and out of shelters, and I could scarcely stand up straight whenever I managed to roll out of bed.  One poor decision and my world was collapsing.  One by one, options fell through--including Lucy, my best friend throughout high school, who still lived in Hagerstown with her husband and two kids, and had absolutely no room for another person.

I didn't know how deep the fathoms could extend until a blazing Saturday afternoon this past July.

Two of my sisters--including the one who owned the home--were outside doing yard work.  I was lying atop a made bed, the tears flooding my face, almost entirely in the dark save for the faint slivers of sunlight that slipped past the drawn shades.  I was utterly unsuspecting, completely vulnerable, when my first sister entered the bedroom.

"Why don't you talk about your family the same way you do Sonic Youth and Snoopy?"

Although I deliberately do not follow family on social media, some of them had been spying on my Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, and hipped my sisters to the extremely bitter and hateful comments I had made.  They were understandably hurt.  Practically hysterical and genuinely remorseful, I laid out my mea culpa.

Soon enough, the oldest sister materialized at the bedroom door.  For the next ten minutes, that is where she would stay as she railed into me with her special brand of "tough love," no one making a move to flip on a light.  She was so apparently disgusted at the idea of being in a confined space with a traitor such as myself that letting all the cold air out of the room was a small price to pay.

As I quivered and quaked, she told me (in the same rigid and severe manner she picked up from our late father) that I was co-dependent on our mother, and that much of the blame for my current situation could be laid squarely at the feet of the woman who raised us.  "She's your band-aid, and it needs to stop."  Both sisters told me that I needed to get over myself.  "There's other people in the world who have it much worse than you.  We all have problems, you just gotta deal with them!" 

A cleaner bisection of my heart could not have been performed.  A more outstanding video showing crisis hotline workers how not to do their jobs could not have been filmed.  Were my head not spinning from the betrayal, I might have even applauded.

"You need to get your shit together, you've had years to do it.  I hope you do," were her final words, spoken as she turned to leave, the officious tone of her voice letting me know that she really did not hope for any such result.  She had helped me, and I disappointed her, so she vowed to never help me again.  Because that's how family works, right?

After one month in a quite-nice Days Inn (where I wrote, watched TV, read, and lost 20 pounds) my mom secured me a spot at a local women's shelter of fine repute.  I hate it here, but I'd hate it anywhere in Hagerstown.  That's just me.  So I seek things to alleviate that chronic disdain, and for a month now, Body/Head has been the main thing, the thing I keep returning to like a great local restaurant.  Listening to Kim Gordon work the limits has never been anything short of exhilarating. 

"Abstract"--Nah, this ain't no discotheque.  And if there is any sort of fooling around, it's being done by two people who aren't fools at all.

Tell me how you can live, knowing that someone in your family is floundering, knowing as well that you have the ability to help them out in some significant way--oh believe me, at this point they are all significant--and you do nothing but let the division grow and the discomfort fester.  Tell me how a human mind reconciles that.  Tell me.  Then I will tell you about panic so deep the world begins to drown.

"I can only think of you in the abstract." 

A song title so on-the-nose Kim's first word might as well be "Beep!"

"Murderess"--Sixty-seven seconds.  More than enough time to relieve the planet of a life.  Some impulses should stay secret. 

Kim is off-key as ever.  Raw as ever.  Breathing on your neck, heat and cinnamon.  How long can we go?

"Last Mistress"--Insert several sentences about the dangers of postulation here.  The song, like the album in fact, is named after a movie.  Kim retreats to the visual, not the visceral, which gives "Last Mistress" a spooky sense of detachment. 

This is also the first of a few pieces on Coming Apart that are undeniably redolent of the best parts of A Thousand Leaves (which is to say, all the parts).  How can I avoid falling in love with this record that's saying all the right things to all the right parts of my body?

"Actress"--We-should-melt-time.  Dab a bit on a finger and suck up a taste or two.  Honey-sweet to start, but blood-sour going down.

I act well for strangers.  I'm still very much the polite, reserved young lady. Trials make a person better, or bitter.   I would like to be finished with this show very soon, thanks.  

"Untitled"--A brief instrumental in response to rumors, gossip, words untrue.  A gorgeous quilt whose warmth I can trust eternally, even though sometimes the material irritates my skin.  

"Everything Left"--And you may find yourself, collapsing in an undignified disarray.  And you may ask yourself, "What if I'm out of my depths when it comes to living?"

The wounds are still so fresh.  Yes, yes, I am applying ointment to the affected areas.  I know enough to keep certain ones bandaged, and I realize also that from time to time the gauze must be changed, to let those ugly bastards breathe.  I'm trying, you see?  The insistence of memory coupled with the persistence of time is the most diabolical tag-team since The Conquistadors stretched the golden spandex.  

"Can't Help You"--This music's turnin' me into mincemeat, takin' it's sour time of it too.  I can't allow this to happen, no matter how caught up I become.  The rebuilding process--financial, emotional, spiritual-- takes time and effort, so I will grasp a pen in each hand and close my eyes.  I will think about the texture of the instruments, how resilient they are, and more than anything I will zone in on how comfortable I am holding them.  Tactile therapy requires an expenditure of just a few minutes and it ends up buying me many more.

"Ain't"--A deleterious "cover" of Nina Simone's "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" that features Kim Gordon levitating through sheer willpower.  No tricks, no trades, just desire.  I am in awe.  Body/Head surpasses any medical treatment I've thus far received. 

Ain't got no job.  Money.  Prospects.  Hope.  Way out.  The extemporaneous approach has not served me well. 

"Black"--Another adaptation, this time of Patty Waters' "Black Is the Color (Of My True Love's Hair)."  Bill and Kim guide us through the Catacombs of Paris via echolocation. 

"Frontal"--No matter how we exit, we leave behind scattered objects in an abandoned room.  What is within those four walls should not be interpreted as a grand summation of a life in toto, but only as a snapshot of that life at its ending.  I endeavor to be charitable for those left behind--a thousand knives, left for your disguise.

"You're not gonna cut me in two!"

"You would have killed me/Had you not raped me."

This woman has amazed me, ceaselessly, for 23 years.  I would love to be brave enough to expose my gears to the world the way Kim Gordon does and fear not the reprisals.  As it stands right now, I can safely say that if I'd had inkling one way back when of what costs writing would extract, I would have repressed my creative urges and flung myself whole-hog into nice domestic stupor.  

To many, Coming Apart is simply that.  Some undistinguished free-form composition, some irritating shrieking.  To others--to me--this is a joyously "difficult" album that meets every expectation.  Listening to it, my reservations about myself evaporate.  I suddenly feel fully prepared to do some dirty, dangerous, and possibly demeaning work just to get ahead.  Some day, I just might have to. 

Kim Gordon doesn't just walk on the thin ice.  She breaks out the shaver and concocts her treats Baltimore-style.  A tastier analgesic I have not come across this year.

I'd like to thank her one day for not letting me down.

3-D Like Me: Action Is Character

Chelsea Light Moving
Chelsea Light Moving
3/5/2013

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here:
Thurston Moore--vox and guit-fiddle
Keith Wood--additional guit-fiddle
Samara Lubelski--bass
John Moloney--drums

(Originally written May 2013)

Definitely wasn't planning on reviewing this one; plans to post my write-up of Lee Ranaldo's Between the Times and the Tides, just a week after release, went tits up when I was admitted to the hospital.  A week later, I returned home and tossed the review in the garbage.

A few months later, I did the same to my life.

Wow, it's been a year...May 8th was when I just up and quite my title examiner job.  Nearly two years working in a well-respected office, in a well-paying position (secured by my well-connected sister)--gone.  Because I couldn't control my fears.  Because I was convinced I was wasting away, that if I didn't do something drastic soon, I'd never get published, I would die unsung.  So I quit my job.  In this day and age.  I was growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of motivation re: my fiction writing, and thought that such drastic action would provide the kick-start I needed.  I'd saved up a good amount of cash, I could live off that and maybe grab a part-time job until I got my li'l career going.

Reason No. 54 It Sucks Having All of Your Friends Live Far Away:  No one is there to grab you by your shoulders, shake you so you can hear your brain sloshing around inside your head, and yell "WHAT IN THE UNHOLY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?  You can make room for both your job and your writing!  You need to stop being so impatient.  Take a breath and work something out."

Next month I'll be moving back to Hagerstown.  Back in with mom, although she moved out of the house I grew up in last year, and now resides in a cozier crib near the city limits that was once owned by her son-in-law's parents.  This is the worst possible result.  I have lived the past two years in Frederick, a city just a half-hour drive away from Hagerstown, but oh does it feel like a whole new world.  The downtown in Frederick is actually vibrant--amazing restaurants, great bars, safe to walk, friendly people.

Mom's pretty confident I can find work again in Hagerstown, and once I save up enough money, I'll be out of there.  For good.  I really want to be back here for next summer.  I'm scared as hell.  This is failure on a level that breaks certain people.  Trying to remain positive.  If I have been one thing for most of my life other than overweight, it's resilient.

When I wake up in the morning, and realize what I have done and the damage I have caused, it feels like a line drive to the face.  Every day is like that.  I am doing this review in large part because I need to write something.  When all else fails, let me just kneel at the laver and cleanse my hands.  

"heavenmetal"--Instantly I hear the malfunctioning magneto.  Nothing within these two minutes is heaven, or metal.

"Be a warrior/Love life."  I have every reason to do the former and none to do the latter.  But I'll gladly isolate outstanding moments and throw them up on the shelf.

"Sleeping Where I Fall"--Same chords on every Thurston solo record ever.

He seems displeased with someones stifling presence in his life.  "I never know know what to do/Everybody knows it's because of you."  Everybody also knows you coulda chopped this tune in half and been just fine.

I wrote about Sonic Youth's "hiatus" in the lost-forever LR review, and I would be remiss to not speak of it here.  Did the news send me for a loop?  Absolutely.  Was I giving the side-eye to people online claiming to be in tears over the announcement?  Oh yeah.  I mean, I've been a fan for 23 years.  I've seen them live 58 times.  But things end, y'all.  They have to.  Sure, I would have liked for SY's end to be not so abrupt; to be not so precipitated by bullshit.  But that's how it played out. 

"Alighted"--Easily the best thing on here.  Faux black metal I will take any and every day over faux Black Flag (Bl'ast! did that best, anyway).   Not to mention we get a whole three minutes before any vocals kick in!

The fact that T can still crank out stuff of this caliber, clutching a severed goddess head in one hand and a bejeweled sword in t'other, fills me with hope.  I have come to dread that feeling. 

"Empires of Time"--Thick in tone, thick of bone.  Electric Wizard this ain't, and I will leave the interpretation up to you.

Haha, guess what?  Employed, you ain't.  Paid, you ain't.  Productive member of society, you ain't.

One foot in front of the other, babe.

"Groovy & Linda"--This album is rather hoary.  I listen and I hear ideas (both lyrical and musical) that are overly-familiar and well-worn.  This leaves me feeling underwhelmed at best, crestfallen at worst, and ultimately disoriented.

I want to exchange this album for a newer, younger-sounding one.  In fact, I think I'll go steal one from my friend's record collection. 

"Lip"--Fuck me in the fuckhole, this song is terrible.  "Too fucking bad!" ad nauseum, emphasis on the nausea.  A spotty snot of bother that comes off like an angrier, cussier "Hang Out," "Lip" is the audio equivalent of casu marzu--and the maggots are dead.  The jejune emotionalism is exasperating, and verges on charlantry. 

You'll get five across yer lip, Thurston, ya big dummy.  Stomp off to the corner, place this brown crown on your head, and think--I mean actually think--about what it is you've done here.

"Burroughs"--A ball-hoot which is neither ball nor hoot.  Thurston took inspiration from the last words Mr. Burroughs spoke before his passing on.  He called love "the most natural painkiller," which fascinated Thurston, as such a saccharine sentiment seemed incongruous with the legendary writer's cantankerous reputation.  "Hey Billy!  Hey Billy!" oh this is such a no-go.  You know the conventional wisdom about books made into movies?  Same applies to writers made into songs.

At least nothing on CLM is as barrel-under-the-chin depressing as Demolished Thoughts.  Good Lord.  Dude sounded on the verge of breaking into "If You Could Read My Mind" for half the record.

I must continue on.  I have been a fan, a supporter, of this guy's music for over twenty years.  It is a dereliction of duty to not listen to what he has to offer.  I just don't grasp his lust for the past.  I avoid the hell outta the past; he's running towards it with arms outstretched, corners of his mouth upturned, eyes wide and dewy. 

"Mohawk"--It's Beat poetry!  Oh goddamnit!  Dude, seriously, I have a life to try and turn around, it's pretty scary.  Stop insisting that a pudding cup constitutes a hearty meal, would'ja?

DROOOOONE
strumastrumastrum

So, hold on...T-man is approaching his 60s and he's responding by revisiting the 1960s?  Okay?

A poem is like a child--people only care if it's theirs.  And even if the li'l brat's as lazy as a Kentucky bullfrog or as incorrigible as a moonshine maven, you can't tell them that.  

"Frank O'Hara Hit"--Tall finger for the tall man and the strange news he brings about angels.  Six minutes, eh?  Kudos on becoming a hologram.

I can't lose much more time.  Memories splash my brain like hydrofluoric acid.  Unfathomable.  Hurts so much that I can't even scream.  Who gets halfway up the mountain and then says to themselves, "Fuck this, I'm finished" and takes knife to rope? 

"Communist Eyes"--One week, world.  Gimme one week of kindness.  Help me cast aside the devil that has taken over my heart.  Eyes pink and raw, mouth downcast, I can't grow accustomed to that face.

Eff the attempts.  Celebrate the achievements.  Praise those who make bearable the heaviness of doing. 

I'm neither antagonist nor ass-kiss, understand.   There's a discernible cynicism in certain songs here that disheartens me; Thurston's the guy who, in an interview published on the eve of Sonic Youth's 1994 release Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, said that younger critics calling some of SY's songs "cynical" bummed him out, as cynicism was a quality that he felt had no place in art.  I liked that he felt that way; I didn't necessarily agree, or even think any artist could actually avoid cynicism in their work, but the 1990s were the decade of cynicism.  Such an attitude was pretty refreshing. 

I would like to end this piece with some positivity.  Not every song is a winnet clinging from the butt of rock 'n' roll.  Just most of them.  Also, although the album cover looks like Rush's Moving Pictures re-imagined by hippies, it's still nowhere near as terrible as the cover of Gang of Four's Mall. 

3-D Like Me: Heaven Swamps Everything

Thurston Moore
Psychic Hearts
5/10/1995

Help Me Out A Li'l Bit Here:
Thurston Moore--vocals, guitar
Tim Foljahn--bass guitar
Steve Shelley--drums

The Nineties.  In what other decade would a solo release by a member of Sonic Youth earn the lead review in an issue of Rolling Stone?  Without a cool human connect,  I relied on the music mags (RS, Spin, Alternative Press) and the radio.  This meant that in addition to enjoying the truly interesting new tunes I grimaced through some try-hard trash heap material.  Four years after the initial shock, green eyes were still fervently seeking the new Nirvana.  (Eyes and not ears?  Quest doomed.)  You know that hoary saying about not appreciating the good in life without also going through the bad in life?  True.  True true true.

1995 had some outstanding so-called "alt-rock" albums:  Alien Lanes, Wowee Zowee, Electr-O-Pura, Anything Near Water.  I could, either in person or on paper, make a convincing case for the year as an immaculate encapsulation of the musical zeitgeist, but I would have to ignore the very brutal truth that 1995 was also the year that more people gave an non-ironic fuck about Billy Corgan's music and opinions on music than at any other time in history.

Utopia ruined.

                                           ---------------------------------------------------------

So apparently some of the fine folks at DGC thought Psychic Hearts was going to be a hit or something?  After SY's first three major-label recs all failed to crack half a million sales in the US?  Well, it was a big smash in the "Used" section at a lot of stores....

Thurston did not make an ersatz Sonic Youth album, which may have seemed unwise at the time.  In retrospect, it was a decision that resulted in what is still his finest piece of solo work.

"Queen Bee and Her Pals"--No musician can sell out and cash in when they take such great pains to soak their heatstroke poetics in distortion over an instrumental that puts me in mind of a jack-in-the-box that's about to hurl.  The lyrics are meaningful on some alternate plane of existence where cheese grows on trees and books read people.

I sure paid that song a compliment with some odd currency, huh?

"Ono Soul"--The non-hit single is a white-boy snake charmer honoring not just the titular beleaguered, but all noisy female royalty worldwide.

The Sonic Youth Seal of Approval meant a great deal even before the band signed to DGC and started giving interviews to rags that could afford to print color photos.  Mostly it was Thurston, 'cause that guy would not shut the hell up, but really all four SY'ers had zero qualms about sharing their favorite bands/authors/artists/filmmakers that fans and journos may not have heard of before, or heard of but weren't inspired to check out for themselves.   (For every Redd Kross, Harry Crews, and Spike Jonze, however, you were sure to run across a Prolapse or a Cell.  I never said their opinions were unimpeachable.)

Almost as great was when SY referenced names that you would not expect to hear passing through the lips of such cool NYC art-trash--the Carpenters would probably be the primo example here.  Only someone unfamiliar with Yoko Ono's history in the avant-garde art world would really be surprised that hyper-aware archivist spirits would acknowledge her with the utmost regard, though.  That's a lot of someone's though, let's not fool ourselves.  She is still being blamed by millions of lunkheads the globe over for supposedly breaking up an already-volatile band of young male rock stars who were probably just one ill-timed fart in the studio away from breaking up anyhow.

Steve Shelley is the not-so-secret weapon throughout Psychic Hearts.  On "Ono Soul," his deceptively watchful drumming meshes superbly with yet another classic Harpo-meets-Lucy vocal turns by T.  The chorus, all gently-whispered code words and private messages thumped out furtively in the night's midsection, steals my breath, still.

"Psychic Hearts"--If you meet any girl or woman who is pretty much down to kill for Thurston Moore, it's because of this song.

Throughout the album, Thurston's vocals are sprayed with just enough distortion to keep them understandable.  I never knew if his reason behind this was to cover up his shortcomings (dude, we've been hearing you warble on that mic for over twelve years, what's it matter?) or to give these otherwise quite poppy and accessible songs an extra edginess.  It never bothered me, except for a bit with the title track.  As raw and insightful as "Psychic Hearts" the song gets, the distortion acts as a mesh netting of sorts, blunting the emotional impact somewhat.  Mind you, that is the only thing I can find "off" about the song.

There is nothing condescending in Thurston's message to a young girl with "a fucked-up life...in a stupid town."  He doesn't claim to relate, nor does he offer a solution other than to never submit to her worst impulses.  When speaking with the destitute of body, soul and pocket, one does well to skip the ornate jibber-jabber.

He does not ask her to consider how much worse her life could be, or how much worse things are for other people.

He does not implore her to reconcile with her family, because why should the onus be on her? Why should she be the "bigger person"?  What, precisely, is her shame?

 His "prayer" is one of hope and goodwill.  His final words are a promise.  Not a promise that her seemingly untenable situation will one day improve--how on earth could he guarantee that?--but that she will never be able to tell herself, "No one cares about me."

 A girl does not have to identify with each line here to be impacted.  The specifics aren't important when we're talking life and death.  The girl here seems to have retreated into an escape hatch more scandalously-decorated than mine, for instance.  Would she and I even be friends?  Likely not.  But I can tell you we wouldn't be enemies.  She's not some "psycho" punk chick.  "Pussy power" is a cover that she threw on hastily to prevent narrowed eyes from spying her blemishes.  She is understandably dubious of the man speaking to her--is his concern borne of solicitousness or salaciousness?  How can she trust a stranger when the very people supposed to show her love and keep her safe treat her like the result of a lost wager?

Thurston's use of the word "prayer" has always been very interesting to me, because he clearly is not approaching this from the POV of the god-boy who knows that all can be saved, so long as they are willing to give their lives over to a higher power.  There is a theodicy--referred to by philosopher Dr. Stephen Maitzen as "heaven swamps everything"--that suggests Heaven is such a wonderful final destination, so teeming with forgiveness and absolution, so rich with rewards undreamed of during one's mortal life, that it surpasses any and all pain and suffering endured on Earth.  The suffering is not required to receive the reward, but it will be received, and it will be rich indeed.

This raises some serious moral quandaries.  If you told someone being abused, "Well I know this is a horrible situation you find yourself in, but after you pass on into Heaven, the blessings you receive from God will compensate you and then some," there is a possibility that the person may decide to "grin and bear it."  No longer will they seek a way out, or wonder whatever they did wrong to deserve this horrific treatment at the hands of life, because things will work out in the end, quite literally!  It also absolves the adherents to this theodicy of moral culpability.

Thurston doesn't take direct action to improve this girls situation, but not because he believes she will one day look back on these tumultuous times with a non-grudging appreciation.  Nothing she has said or done justifies her treatment at the hands of others.  He understands that his role in her life is an ephemeral one.  Rather than advocate harsh action that could ruin her life for good, he suggests that she keep living, with intelligence and passion.  

"Pretty Bad"--In my review of Nice Ass from earlier in the week, I remarked how my first foray into pearl-diving led me to a bold assumption about the appeal of sex.  Well, right around the time Psychic Hearts was released, my little theory was proven correct.  The first--and last--guy I crushed on in high school, too.

And now back to, When Stoners Flirt.

T-Bone Mo' steps into the shoes of a guy who lacks the aplomb necessary to be a good stalker.  Always muttering or mumbling, as his eyes sink deeper back into his head.  He's not a menace; he's a mouse.

"Patti Smith Math Scratch"--Electric Moore!

Every song on Psychic Hearts fawns at the feet of Patricia Lee.  As it should be. 

Thurston was, for a time, ineffable.  Super-tall, hair flopped over his eyes, sunglasses on at all times.  Then there were the things he did to and with the electric guitar.  He could summons wails and wobbles, or he could bust out pig-tail twist and shout.  Shimmy up, shake down, shivers all around.  Quite the punky brew, sir T.  Wait, what?  2:45?  That's all?!  Unfair dude, I'm not finished dancing yet!

"Blues From Beyond the Grave"--Easily written off as a gorgeous submergence,  "Blues From Beyond the Grave" speaks a different language to me.

When one knows not how to swim, local pools can be every bit as frightening as the ocean.  The color blue is closely entwined with "danger" in my mind, and when they mate, what else can come but death.

Many a nightmare has featured my helpless body in the middle of the vast blue.  Frantically I come to realize that the rest of the world has disappeared, and I am helpless.  I will flail as the waters remain calm.  I will sink.  I will panic.  My vocal cords will seal up in a valiant effort to keep that vile fluid from entering my lungs.  Unfortunately, no air will be allowed in either.

That is why "Blues From Beyond the Grave" contains no words.

"See-Through Playmate"--Lively and lighthearted, until near the end, when Cindy drops by.  Mood switches just a bit, but things are still cool.  Might be a cat-fight as the party winds down. 

"Hang Out"--The lyrics felt good, so he did them.

Before them, though, we get a minute of decor-related drama at the site of the wedding reception, until at last the feng is shui'ed to everyone's satisfaction.  The happy couple materialize not long after:  the nastiest riff on the entire record and a drone that also baked the cake.  Sure it's not multi-tiered, but it's tasty, and there's two plastic people stuck on the tip-top, so baby don't be such a drag. 

"Feathers"--Aww, this sprightly declaration of ventricular devotion gives me the fuzzy-wuzzies.  Die grosse liebe!  "I've been told/Feathers are gold/But why should I care/When you're so near."  Yeah, I...the music is really easy to get caught up in.  Like northern cardinals flying around your head, chirping out their calls of contentment. 

Lucy was able to get into Psychic Hearts somewhat, much more than she ever got with an SY release.  Songs like "Feathers" appealed more to her sensibility--brief, hooky.  And she found Thurston's inability to sing "properly" quite amusing.  Oh how she would laugh and laugh, till her freckled face became as red as the hair on her head.

I found it funny that Thurston was still writing about romantic love in the coded language of the self-conscious poet, the bard who wants to make a reader feel without actually giving away too much of themselves in the process.   That isn't really a complaint; his focus seems much stronger than it was on Jet Set, as none of these songs, thankfully, are plagued by the same indiscreet narm found in "In the Mind of the Bourgeoise Reader." 

Lucy and I had no time for love, Charlie Brown.  Why bother?  Risk of disease, possibility of pregnancy, shaving your legs...no thanks.

"Tranquilizer"--Heavy?  They're playing cat's cradle with a yo-yo made from osmium. 

"Staring Statues"--T-man's Rumplestiltskin impression continues, and I almost wish I had a baby to hand over.  The chorus makes me pump my fist up at all the spry flies.  Sure "Staring Statues" was cobbled together with all the craftsmanship of a sno-cone made by an eight-year-old wearing an eye patch, and yet again he's decided that one verse should be all the verses, but that's awesome. 

"Cindy (Rotten Tanx)"--Hot nights with cool people.  The futility of deciphering Thurston's lyrics should just be accepted at this point.  The reverb effect helps more than it hinders most songs here, as I've said, and "Cindy" is not one of the outliers.

What are "rotten tanx"?  Dirty greasy grimy tank tops?  That's not sexy.  That's indicative of a poor self-image.  Or an unwillingness to do the laundry on a regular basis.  No, wait, "rotten tanx" is that ornery li'l groove the guys kiss and ride from 1:33 to 1:58, the one that crunches like a deep-fried peach pie. 

Where is the song named in Steve's honor, damnit??

"Cherry's Blues"--Folk singer solo set in a meat locker.  One man, one guitar, one stool, one blue bulb dangling from the ceiling.  Not one person in the audience.  Except the drummer.

"Female Cop"--A fatal auto accident occurred just the other day, you can stop by and check out where it was--skid marks the spot.  There's a killer on the road who'd make Marty Plunkett quake in fear.   The cop thought oil was leaking from the car until she got closer.  Once the wind picked up, and the smell hit, she knew then.

Women doing traditionally male jobs, or enjoying traditionally male hobbies...nearly twenty years after this song, I don't think we're any better off in terms of acceptance.  So what, I like to play video games.  I've been playing them since I was six years old.  I also owned Pound Puppies and a Darth Vader piggy bank.  No one ever sat me down and explained to me that I wasn't supposed to be into the things boys liked.  I liked what I liked, and that was that.  After seven kids, I don't know if my mom could summon the strength for some good old-fashioned parental hectoring anyway. 

"Elegy For All the Dead Rock Stars"--AKA "The Diamond Sea Before We Knew About The Diamond Sea," but lacking some key components that made Washing Machine's last song a lustrous gem.  Namely, emotion.  The instruments sound detached from one another, which in turn leaves me feeling detached from the sounds they make together.

Elegy, then, for all the dead guys and gals who did make haste to die.  Sympathy for all the living guys and gals with frozen fudge between their ears, the ones who can't understand how people who seem so well-off, so fortunate, could not find meaningful, reliable comfort in their solvency.

The overall sanguine vibe of Psychic Hearts can pulse through the listener in different ways.  In 1995, I would often lean into that pulsation, seeking comfort and counsel.  Much can change in 19 years, though, and much has changed.

3-D Like Me: Flashover Sequence

LEE RANALDO
East Jesus
4/18/1995

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here
Lee Ranaldo--guitars.  guitars.  I heard some guitars here and there.  He talks, too.
Steve Shelley--drums, track 4
       
                              ----------------------------------------------------------------------

East Jesus differs from the other records in this review series in that it is not a collection of new songs written for a specific project.  The ten songs here were culled from a ten-year period, mostly the mid-80s, and they're honestly less classifiable as "songs" and more as "pieces."  It took three decades for the one member of Sonic Youth whom fans could most easily hear putting out a traditional singer-songwriter record to actually record and release that traditional singer-songwriter record.  This hardly bothered those in the tribe who were just fine listening to CD's full of free-form eavesdrops instead of rehashes of "Mote" or "Wish Fulfillment."  Even if some of us did have to pay one whole arm and half-a-leg to order 'em from the record shop.

"The Bridge"--Assuming things about the artists you follow ain't a recommended course of action, as you will most assuredly wind up feeling at best idiotic, at worst betrayed.  But I wouldn't feel too ridiculous saying that Lee Ranaldo is aware of the motion of music, maybe more so than most others in his line.  Especially forward motion.  The more distance between a person and their past, the more concise and cogent their reflections and observations will be. 

Even if the elapsed time from event to recollection is a mere one week, as is the case with "The Bridge," Lee's sap-free (but hardly sapless) story about a truck ride alongside his old man.  Any expectation the listener might have as to insight into the familial dynamic is dashed as Lee obsesses instead over pungent odors and slippery sounds.

"The Bridge" inspired me, not long after my first listen, to attempt a similar piece of writing.  Several years had passed by--eight, nine?--since I'd had cause to be in a vehicle with my father for any considerable length of time, and that last instance had been just like all the other instances:  driving to Kentucky to visit family, mostly Dad at the wheel because, as he frequently explained to my mother, "Women can't drive for shit."  Especially women who are getting barked at every twenty seconds by their cantankerous husbands. 

Just as Dad was unwilling to budge even half an inch away from his abrasive way of doing things, I could never match what Lee accomplished here--he put the listener in a confined space, with at least two other people, but made the focal point of the piece anything but human interaction.   Did Lee and his father hold any conversation during this entire ride?  Maybe, maybe not.  Adding snippets of their exchange, if they indeed had one, would not have enhanced the work.  Likewise if Lee were to mention, however casually, the taciturn nature of the trip, it would not have enhanced the work.

My failure, thus, was down to a fiendish combination of my limitations as a burgeoning writer as well as my fierce struggles reconciling conflicting emotions over all the crap accumulated from my childhood on, crap that I, a young girl facing adulthood head on, should have tried harder to let go.  Harder to relinquish the hurt when the fanciful side of you is practically crying, "But I'm a writer, I'm expressing myself, it is imperative that I use my trusty pens to tear into my flesh--and isn't there just plenty of it!--and rip away chunks to expose the flesh, blood and pulsating veins to the bravest eyes in the world!  Hmm...hey, would it be pretentious of me to use ergo instead of therefore?"

Overlong journeys lead to overlapping memories.  Sentences snap in half, glimpses are cut up into chunks.  Before long, like remora, these fragments latch onto a larger, fuller area of my brain.  The burger joint with the gumball machine outside.  "You can take the barbecue master outta Texas, but you can't drive for shit, goddamn women."

See, I still can't do it.

"Time Stands Still/Destruction Site/Oroboron/Slo Drone"--It is not the fault of any music, film or book.  Simple reality drove me to complex fantasy.  Walking to and from school every weekday sure is tiring, but wouldn't it be great to have a slide made entirely from the cleanest ice beginning at my front door and ending at the school entrance?   WOOOOO.  No, there wouldn't be any need for bumpers along the sides.  Gravity obeys my laws here. 

I would hop on the swings and launch myself up into the air, losing myself in the worlds of others that I had visited.  I mimicked the language and gestures of the citizenry,  made people pay attention, made them laugh.  That's me, in the midst of all the action.  Unbound.  Flawless.

I would lie in bed at the shelter, earbuds plotting vengeance most foul as East Jesus berated them.  No matter.  I'm about to be published.  My first novel.  My dream made reality.  Inside of my fantasy.

"Some Distortion..."--Obviously, I have not put a sufficient amount of distance between myself here and now and myself there and then. 

The ten wonderful minutes of the previous slash-fest give way to twelve-plus minutes of...some distortion.  Some signal-bouncing.  All glorious.  Most people would not want to catch these sounds alone in a dark alley.  I sure as fuck would.  To think that while I was sitting my little ass at home, devouring entire bags of Ruffles chips and guzzling can after can of Pepsi, a band who got no play on the MTV were a five-hour drive away, making the music that would one day flip my wig.  All I had to do was find the music for myself.  All I had to do was turn into that alley.

"Live Co. #1"--Lee, live, is hot to jump out of his skin.  Every now and then a guy's gotta fall to pieces in front of people.  Purge by fire going on, and only a fool reaches for the extinguisher.

My dude is driving himself crazy, and if there's any room left in the truck, I'd love to join in on the adventure.  I don't care how foul it smells in there.

Let loose.  Don't sweat the locution.  Wetly embrace the passion.

"What road is this?"

Wait, you don't know?  Uh-oh, dude.

"Death holding court."

Swerve!  Swerve!  

"New Groove Loop"--Erosive influences all over this album, especially here. The roads do no end, nor for that matter does the sky, which we would all do well to remember represents the road to other creatures with whom we share this planet.  

"Some Hammering..."--Growth is not necessarily commensurate with time.  There are people on this plane of existence who can do more, can give more, can offer more, with just thirty seconds than some others with thirty years.

"Walker Groves"--When indulging in a bit of the old ultra-reflection, avoid despondency by not obsessing over all those times the off-camera flash was not utilized by remembering that it was not always an option. 

I need to stop doing that, I want to stop falling into that same trap, I mean it hasn't even evolved.  Cheese on the goddamn trip every time.  No peanut butter, no pizza?  Come on me, it's like you don't even know me.  Stop thinking that you need everything you want.  One's trash is the second's treasure, and hands will inevitably be dirtied, bruised, even pricked, but judging the exploration a failure simply because no scars were inflicted or no blood brought to light or you didn't get what you were hoping to find has to end.  

No such thing as a superficial scavenge.  Not when survival is at stake. 

"Fuzz/Locusts/To Mary x2/Lathe Speaks"--In this test of Ultimate Tensile Strength, the pen wins again.

1987...my fifth-grade class was introduced to the haiku poem,  5-7-5 format.  This would be the day.  The match was struck, then casually dropped.  (I was drenched in diesel already, just didn't realize.)  Asked to write as many haiku poems as we could manage in five minutes, I came up with eight or so, but if the teacher had warned us in advance that we'd be called upon to read our writing out loud in class, I would have written just one.

Good thing she didn't give us the heads up; my poems proved to be the best of all 20+ students.  The teacher told me.  The other kids told me.  Compliments?  Asking me how I can come up with all those different topics to write about, and so much in so little time?  I'm not used to getting all this attention for something other than being a weird fatso...

"You seem to have a real talent for writing, Jennifer."

That was it, then.  People realize they were meant to be writers, and not just people who write, when they realize nothing else behaves like them.  Soon as the bell rang, I walked home as fast as my chunky legs would allow, raced up to my bedroom and filled the front and back of one sheet of lined paper with more writing.  Writing about my day in school, about my room, about family, about anything that struck me right then and there.  I read what I had scribbled down, and could scarcely believe I had really done it.

 I really do have a talent for this.  I can really bring my thoughts to life.  

I can still bring my thoughts to life.  The words themselves are finite, no matter how many languages one learns, but the desire to communicate is boundless.  I'm not finished; no writer is ever finished.   

"Deva, Spain (Fragments)"--Good grief, more fragments?

I don't mean little kids talking about farts when I say small talk stinks.  Enough with these wispy words and sentences in need of sponsors; where can I go, and how much do I pay, to see my young life represented in voxel form, stripped of natural bias and pesky emotion? 

On hold, the looping guitar keeps me free company.  I am conditioned to respond warmly to the very same feedback that sends others into paroxysms of visible displeasure.  I grew up with storytellers, and with little effort I glean the tantalizing tales lurking in the corners.  Lee is definitely the storyteller of Sonic Youth.  Even when he's not saying a word.

"The Resolution/King's Ogg"--Loop.  Loop.  Pool.  Pool.  Wait, I can't swim.  Loop.  Loop.

A place for everything and everything in its place. Updated biofeedback treatment for syncope sufferers.

Asthma sufferers, keep looking.  Keep fishing.  Keep the rod and reel well-strung, the multi-tiered tackle box stocked with colorful come-ons.  The willows along the stream protect stream life and the rows of trees help us breathe.  Feeling as though the natural world is closing in on you does not mean it actually is closing in on you.



Unequal parts serenity and carnage...East Jesus is life in miniature. 

3-D Like Me: Girl on the Verge

FREE KITTEN
Nice Ass
1/30/1995

Help Me Out a Li'l Bit Here
Kim Gordon--vox, guitar, drums
Julie Cafritz--vox, guitar
Yoshimi P-We--drums, vox, trumpet, harmonica, guitar
Mark Ibold--bass

                                               ---------------------------------------------

Early '95.  Still half the year to go before I could say farewell forever to formal education.  School and I never jibed; our time together was awkward, a matter of need rather than want, requirement over revitalization.  Teachers, and even other students, remarked that I was a classic case of "bright student who doesn't apply themselves."  I suppose what turned me off was the formality, the rigidity.  On my own time, I read widely--fiction, non-fiction, poetry, much-honored classics and underappreciated gems.  Imagine a black hole at the intergalactic dinner table.  That's how I treat information.

Prima facie, you would have classified me as a geek.  You would have been right as rain.  All I lacked were the corrective lenses--they'd come later, after I graduated.  Yep--I went through twelve years of public school with severe myopia.

1995 was one of the better years of that decade, leastways for me.  As a Sonic Youth fan, it was kinda hard not to love 1995.  Not only did the group headline Lollapalooza that summer (one of the great "well, on paper…" ideas in concert history), not only did they release an album containing one of their all-time classic tunes, but there were side project releases from Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore (with Steve Shelley on the assist) as well.

Lollapalooza gets the bozack and gas face, however.  Closest it came to Maryland was the goddamn race tracks in Charles Town, West Virginia.  My best friend Lucy and I were all dead-set on attending--me for the music, she to get away from her grandmother, with whom she lived--but our grand plan fizzled out thanks to a lack of reliable transportation.  The one and only time I can remember Luce's ol' green Chevelle letting us down.  My anger over missing not only SY, but Pavement and Jesus Lizard as well, hung around my neck for awhile afterwards, but it had dropped away unceremoniously by spring 1998, when I finally saw the Youth live for the first time, at DC's legendary 9:30 Club.  Several years after that, as I laid incredulous eyes upon footage of Pavement being pelted with mud during the very Lolla gig I was going to be at, forcing them to abbreviate their set, I realized I hadn't missed very much at all.  That was a very silly couple of weeks I spent being angry over what could have been.

Feeling especially unoriginal, I told myself, "No regrets, Coyote."  Then I realized I'd never once spotted a coyote in Hagerstown. (Playwrights, sure, but no coyotes.)  So I murmured, "No regrets then, unleashed pit bull" and wondered if I could really, truly live the rest of my life so carefree.

                                   ----------------------------------------------------------------

Kim Gordon contacts long-time friend/former Pussy Galore'r Julie Cafritz.  "Let's adopt a baby boy elephant," she says, no discernible inflection in her voice.  Julie agrees without hesitation, the way only a best friend can.  As the ladies are sussing out the logistics of pachyderm ownership, the idea of bringing a couple other people on board is suggested.  That's how the SY/PG/Boredoms/Pavement hybrid known as Free Kitten started.

Conceived and executed with all the deliberate sloppiness of hillbilly goulash, Nice Ass is the most "of the era" album involving a Sonic Youth member in a significant creative role.  The alt-rock/indie in-jokes contained within were plentiful and potentially off-putting, especially to people named Billy Corgan.  But so what?  Free Kitten's gutsy blues-punk tribble rock electrified the French, baby.

"Harvest Spoon"--I never was a Riot Grrl.  I believe wholegutedly in egalitarianism, so scorched earth divisiveness never rang the bell.  Nope, not even when I was a teen, and that's the time in a person's life when they're expected, hell, encouraged, to believe in things with all of their heart and a bit of their brain.

The only thing I love more than an educated woman is an educated woman with a great sense of humor.  That's why Bratmobile got play from me, while Bikini Kill--despite being the far more heralded band--did not.  That's also why Kim Gordon meant more to me than any other female musician, even the ones closer to me in age and/or geography, those hyper-politicized essay writers I was supposed to gravitate towards in frenzied kinship.   Kim relocated from California first to Toronto then to NY in pursuit of an art career, eventually dropping the paints and pencils for strings and cords, proving that individual integration is a move much gutsier and more pregnant with revolutionary possibilities than calling for audience segregation.

A decade into her musical career, Kim was still subject to her unfair share of sexism.  When Neil Young's douchenozzle road crew drooled over strippers and gaped in wonder at this chick with the opening band who acted like she belonged onstage with the guys, Kim didn't respond with foot-stomping, hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing or even zine-publishing.  She let her disgust simmer and stretch.  Behold--metaphors! Evocative imagery!

Could she have unleashed a throat-throttling "fuck you and everyone who willingly stands within five inches of you" to those dimwitted sexist bums?  Certainly.  But the music sounded obscene enough, stepchild treatment and all.

"Rock of Ages"--The in-crowd at my high school was outta control lame.  All those handsome and beautiful creatures cared about the things I couldn't even pretend to be moved by.  Far removed from my redneck of the woods, Sonic Youth, Pavement, et al. represented the rolling stoned in-crowd that at least had the decency to sound better than most everybody else.

"Rock of Ages" is not a Def Leppard cover.  Different cat altogether.  Chester Cheetah in one speaker, MC Skat Kat's homeless brother in another.  Blinding sheen versus corrugated steel that has been intentionally rusted.  An actual kitten playing a red-and-white Fender Strat is the only thing chillier.

Kim and Julie, see, concocted a glorious piss-take pep talk consisting of literal shout outs to all the indie heartthrobs, with their sexy mugs and spindly arms.  They even dare to be gauche by mentioning the dude in their own band!  (I recall a mag writer at the time wondering if "Mark, 32" referred not to Ibold, but instead to Fall frontman/boss-level football results-reciter Mark E. Smith.  Eh, pretty sure Mr. Smith was already 32 years old by the time he exited the womb.)

"Proper Band"--Listening to the lo-fi likes of Sebadoh, I was never once struck with the desire to disown the music that moved me as young girl.  With few exceptions, the exceptionally-produced pop music of the 1980s endures, just as powerfully as the four-track bedroom recordings of a careworn former HC kid.

Sometimes, I just stare at my music collection, and wait for all those discs to start fighting with one another.  (I should mention here that I don't use drugs.  Seriously!)

"We're Kitten and we're better than you."

No such thing as a mature amateur.  Either they're ensnared by snarling insecurities over the fact that their songs will never come off as crisp as Duran Duran, or they rhyme "band" with "sounds" and suddenly things are okay.

"What's Fair"--"Girls are freaks, don't even try."

I hear the cats jingling some jewelry…

99% of the kids in any one of my classes were the enemy.  Either passively or aggressively.  Those who fit into the latter description would toss sundry objects at me--balled-up paper, pen caps, staples.  The former type would be those students seated in the very same row as me, who found great amusement in passing notes to one another containing on-the-spot observational humor about yours truly.  Ugly fat face, ugly cheap clothes, ugly deep voice.  Haha, she doesn't even realize she's passing notes talking shit about her!  Until that day I did.  Did they even have the decency to be chagrined?  Did they hell.

School is a house of learning, after all, so I learned to keep one open just a little wider than the other.  To this day, I do not miss nor misinterpret a social cue.  It's like the opposite of Aspergers.

Like right now!  You held back that eye roll pretty well, but you couldn't avoid that oh so slight ihuff of breath signalling impatience.  

"What's Fair" is a perfect example of why no one but me listened to this stuff.  Sure, I could have scratched a nerd and discovered a casual SY fan in my midst, but Free Kitten?  With their laissez-faire approach to songwriting?  Come on, it sounds like they're just making it up as they go along.  Christ, their equipment sounds like it's about to die.  The guitars and pedals are all like, "No Kitten, stop using us this way, or we're gonna jump!"

"Kissing Well"--Sometimes a swig can lead to a waterborne coolness infecting your system.  Not here.  Ah well.  I preferred liquid sugar anyway.

The second-longest song on Nice Ass is unfortunately the least-engaging.  The K&J Show sound bored, and not in the way they sound bored throughout the rest of the album, I mean these women come off legitimately disinterested in the performance aspect of being in a band.

"Call Back"--The primacy of the feline in the domesticated animal kingdom is arguable.  Economical in size, softer in vocalization, exemplary fastidiousness re: personal hygiene…oh yes, a strong case can indeed be made for the cat.

For a creature that supposedly loathes the water, this Kitten is swimming with the current, strokes tight and strong.  Still no gold to be spied gleaming from the ocean floor, though.  Highs, lows, choke choke.  Back on land, the word salad bar is now open and stocked full of fresh-ass ingredients.

Henry Rollins namedrop!  Lucy loved her some HR.  Couldn't name a Black Flag song at spray-point, but his spoken word "confrontations," where he bared at length the bigger-than-yours-motherfucker heart that beat beneath all that inked-up musculature, she couldn't get enough of that crap.  I had to sit there, phone held up to my rapidly-reddening ear, and listen as she would play selections from The Boxed Life, pausing only to ask me rhetorical questions that I would nevertheless answer with annoyed grunts that she never picked up on, because unlike me, she never developed the opposite of Aspergers.

My favorite aspect of Henry Garfield's inexplicable rise to mainstream acceptance in the 90s was the attention he received over starting his own publishing company.  Fuck yeah, books!  He's got a band?  And they sound like Black Flag meets Black Sabbath meets black tar heroin?  Not interested!

Imagine Kim with her own publishing imprint.  Imagine Kim doing her own singer-songwriter solo album.  Imagine Kim curating a music festival.  Oh heart, why does my imagination insist on breaking you so?

"Blindfold Test"--The "da da da" song, I love this one!  Catchy as yawning, but with just a touch of abashment.

Pin-up girls and all-American boys, guess who doesn't need you?

"Tryin' to find a lovely time."

Where could I do that at?  Not in Hagerstown.  Shit no, heaven and Earth had to be pushed pulled and prodded with sprinkles on top and all along the sides just to ensure a night where I didn't gaze forlornly at the TV, frantically pushing buttons until I arrived at some ephemeral escape, anything to not lose my mind wondering if I would die in the same culture-free hellhole I was born into.  Lucy seemed sure that I would be one of the success stories, but curiously held no such hopes for herself.  Hagerstown is that kind of place, y'see--a place for people who are content to say, "It's not much, but it'll do."  For those who observe their surroundings and proclaim, "It's not much, and it'll do me in," action must be taken sooner rather than later.   I'm not finished yet, I'd remind myself.  I really haven't even started.

"Greener Pastures"--Kittens gonna kitten.  Meaning?  Meow, mamas.  Roll over, paw at the head of that much larger dog and purr.

Cash?  None.  Responsibilities?  Few.  Favorite author?  Dr. Seuss.

"Revlon Liberation Orchestra"--"Soft and sexy," over and over.  Dual vox takeover, pillowy and furry, quicker and harder to pin down--which shouldn't even be the intent.  Why are the drums off in kitchen baking pies for astronauts?  'Cause they're hungry and NASA is some cheap bastards.

"Like Sylvester without Tweety Bird!"

Forget X-Girl; Lucy and I dressed up in Girl, Why?  Supersized tees, all the better to hide the blubber, frequently decorated with a cartoon character making some silly face or spouting a sillier catchphrase.  Lucy stretched her jeans to capacity, while I--in the interest of feeling as little of my cellulite pressing against fabric as possible--opted for sweet sweet sweatpants.

And no make-up.  What would be the point, precisely?

Me:  I'm gonna be a writer, I don't need that extraneous crap.  I'll be selling my words, not my face.  Lucy:  Right on.  I don't put any on 'cause I'm just lazy!

"The Boasta"--Julie Hatfield on the mic.  Kim and Yoshimi switch instruments for the ninety seconds allotted to scrape as much chipped paint as they can into a cup of already-acrid coffee. Ugh, coffee.  My folks seemed to have the Mr. Coffee switched on to "Always and Forever."  Wake up, smell the damn Folgers.  Arrive home from school, smell the damn Folgers.  Go to wish Mom a good night, she'll respond in kind just as soon as she's done taking a pull from her damn cup of Folgers.

The way Julie changes "solo" to "solah" to make it rhyme with "told ya" is the sort of playful attitude to lyricism that Ready Red desperately needed for his verse on "Do It Like a G.O."  Sure enough, there is a solo here, basically just makin' gravy for the biscuits.  Now that is a smell from home that I enjoyed.

"Scratch the DJ"--Hey, a kitten's gotta scratch somethin'.

A hip-hop tale of vengeance against a violating disc jockey who dared opine over the airwaves that Belly ruled whereas Kitten drooled.  Kim's Cali speak-sing makes for some hilariously great accented syllables and profanities delivered so casually I almost forgot they were "bad words."  Hard for me to envision such a seemingly-mellow person bum-rushing the booth and knocking out a talking asshole--really seems more of a "Julie thing"--but how can I disbelieve a voice like hers?

This is my favorite on Nice Ass, just edging "Blindfold Test."  I'd say mentioning LeShaun (rapper of the greatest song about fingering a dude's ass you are likely to ever hear) is what puts this one over the top.

"Secret Sex Friend"--Forty-one seconds of hells-a-lockin'.  Gotta song in your head gotta get it out get it out get it out NOW.

Not long after giving myself an orgasm for the first time, I concluded that sex was something surely hindered if not ruined by the presence of another person.  Not long after hearing this track for the first time, I imagined my own super-duper sex friend got off by wearing a bright yellow strap on that she'd christened The Bangnana.

"Royal Flush"--Three and a half minutes?  This is totally their "Achilles Last Stand."  Actually it's Kim's lament for the "sugar pop queen," which may have been a reference to Mariah Carey.  I don't know.  Free Kitten were built for the short, sharp shocks.

"Feelin'"--What turns "pretty good" into "really good"?  Is it one word?  One taste, one glimpse?  When the weekend drear got me down, I just made one call.

Hey Lucy let's go to the park, nah we ain't gotta walk.  Let's just park the Chevelle in the gravel lot.  We can grab some BK on the way and eat it while we catch up.  Nobody's gonna bug us 'cause they'll be too busy doing drugs or drug deals or engaging in some empty sex.  Nobody's gonna look twice at our pockmarked faces or our expanding waistlines.  Five minutes?  I'll be out front.

"Alan Licked Has Ruined Music For An Entire Generation"--Who? How?  Ah nooo, Free Kitten have just told an in-joke that I can't somewhat appreciate!  And considering the track is only eight scree-ing seconds long, this one must be the most gut-busting of them all!

Son of a bitch, it was!  Forget dissing the god of the "twee-rock," dude, someone was still referencing Tone-Loc in the year 1994!

                                       -----------------------------------------------------------

Y'know, I never wanted to swallow the treasure, so to speak.  Whatever bands I enjoyed, I didn't feel protective of them or their music.  Loving Sonic Youth didn't make me feel smarter than anyone else.  I would have been so happy having a friend with whom to share the more "subterranean" selections from my CD collection.    Alas, that I had a friend at all seemed accidental.