Here's a piece I did for The Good Men Project about what I like to call "sports criticism". That would be the intersection of sports and criticism. I wrote it a while ago but couldn't get it published until now. You can tell that from how heavily it leans on a long-ago Simmons column. Enjo!
UPDATE: This video is new to me. Thanks, Extra Large!
You would know about my new music blog, which contains no sound-files and is only barely about music. Another post later, this one on Yahweh ben Yahweh might be of special interest to you readers.
Also, check out the latest The Works, especially for the words on the Atlanta Dream's Angel McCoughtry, who could change the league as we know it. That's a theme QMcCall picked up on early this morning, wondering if McCoughtry, as currently constructed, wasn't at once revolutionary and regressive. Assuming, of course, that you consider all of basketball one big conceptual continuum. And ignoring, for the moment, the "WNBA is like classic NBA" trope (trope or meme? is a trope a grown-up meme? is a meme the destruction of all possible tropery? do you want to see my hands?), which otherwise raises the question of whether the NBA itself hasn't regressed, on and off, ever since the dawn of the Celtics, Wilt, and Elgin Baylor. I wonder if there's a way to place prop bets on the currents of history. That's some online betting I could get down with!
Hoping to get a post up here later and underdogs vs. fledglings.
Encounters With Deities: The How to Dress Well interview
I have this certain nostalgia for the days when I used to find out about new music organically. Pre-MP3s & Youtube, when you heard a song--in a record store, on a friend's walkman/discman, or even in a music video, it was unclear whether you would ever hear that song again. So you had to hunt it down, ask around, form allegiances, sing it in your head so you wouldn't forget it. That is sort of the process by which I came across How to Dress Well, flipping through internet pages, catching one of his songs, losing the page, and misremembering his name. Someone posted a link to his stuff on twitter a few weeks ago, and then I made sure to acquire everything I could. Since then, I haven't been able to stop listening.
The guyismakingquiteanameforhimself , seemingly popping up everywhere on the net. I will forego the adjectives "ghostly," "lo-fi," "ethereal," and "hallucinogenic" that seem to always accompany descriptions of his music and just say that it is infectious. It was with great serendipity then, that I found out he linked to freedarko on his very own blog/trove of tunes. Turns out guy is a huge hoops fan, and humored me for an interview, which I present to you below.
Dr. Lawyer IndianChief: I know you've moved around a bit. i have a few questions related to that...do you have a home team or a favorite team? if so, what made that team your favorite?
How to Dress Well: my home team is, for better or worse, the denver nuggets. that's where i grew up, so those are my dudes. alex english, fat lever, hanzlik, and then dikembe, laphonso 'the fonz' ellis, robert pack etc. and fucking RODNEY ROGERS! ha, always good to take a trip down memory lane...
Dr. LIC: were you able to follow the nba when you were in germany? what is the interest in the nba over there?
HTDW: ya, actually--- the first thing i bought with my paypal earnings from cdrs was league-pass broadband, so i could watch the playoffs. no germans give a shit about basketball tho...
Dr. LIC: what would it do to the city [denver] if carmelo left?
HTDW: i've been thinking about this a lot. it would ruin us. it would put us back to where we were before melo--- i think we had the worst record in the nba the year before he came, like 18-64 or some shit.... it would be dreadful. the problem is, we're right on the edge now: if he stays, we could really put some shit together in the coming years. or we could flounder and it could ruin his career. so i appreciate his desire to leave, but i really hope he stays. if he goes, i hope he goes to chicago, where i'm living now. that team would ruin miami--- rose, corver, melo, boozer, etc. would be amazing!
Dr. LIC: because i'm from minneapolis, i have to ask where did you live when you were there? did you enjoy it? were you there during the kg years?
HTDW: ha. i was there for one summer in 2005. lived just across the highway from dinkytown--- like on the corner of SE 5th and SE 6th.
Dr. LIC: ...going to make the clunky move to asking questions about your music // basketball... i read that you have some background in the black metal scene and being in those types of bands. who in the nba is the most "black metal?"
HTDW: ha. good question. if he wasn't such a huge celine dion fan, ron ron would have to be up there. kristic just came out of nowhere, pumping his black metal quotient up pretty high with that chair throw in the Worlds-- tho that move is a bit more hard-core than black metal.
Dr. LIC: you talk about being influenced by a lot of 90s r&b. for me, new jack swing and the jordan years of the nba, go hand and hand. does this connection resonate with you?
HTDW: ya absolutely. i mean, for me it was all about my walkman and shooting the basketball in my driveway. it's also tight, by the by, that the nba is returning to some crazy kind of hey-day right now as the 90's are coming back full swing. i mean, htdw is not new jack swing and the Triami heat are not the bulls (get real-- chris bosh is as talented as one of horace grants legs), but there's some homologies popping off there.
Dr. LIC: your videos have a consistently dreamscape-like quality. if you were to create a video for one of your songs using nba footage, what would you use?
HTDW: oh man--- it'd have to be dikembe crying on the floor after the nugs beat the sonics.
Dr. LIC: one of the things that makes people gravitate toward your music is the intimacy of it. do you think this level of public intimacy is possible in sports?
HTDW: no, but that's because they're just very different domains, music or art more generally and sport. like, this is why stephon marbury became an artist with his youtubes and had to quit hoops.
Dr. LIC: ...some questions on current events...who do you like to win it all this year? why?
HTDW: i want to see denver (of course) or okc win it all, but i think it will likely be someone else. here's my bold prediction: i don't think the lakers or the celtics will be in the finals.
Dr. LIC: how do you think the miami experiment will work out?
HTDW: look, my only thoughts are: miami will NOT win the championship. i don't have a lot of faith in that crew. they'll finish 2nd in the east in the regular season and in the playoffs.
Dr. LIC: which team do you think has made the biggest improvement in the offseason?
HTDW: i'm moving to chicago, so i'm pretty stoked on their moves... they need someone like melo to take them to the next level though.
For those unfamiliar with J-Zone, there isn't a lot I can tell you that you can't find on his Wikipedia page: Producing for everyone from Biz Markie to the Lonely Island and E-40, dropping a string of classic albums, writing for Slam and for Dante Ross' website...The man played a seminal role in the (then-viable) independent hip-hop scene of the late 90s/early 2000s, rapping with as much personality as a young Eazy-E and cultivating "swag" before infants knew what swag was and consequently killed the term. He is perhaps best known for developing a distinct production style that follows in the tradition of Prince Paul, DJ Muggs, and Psycho Les, but is all his own. But beyond J-Zone's musical talents, he has also been a world-class tastemaker. His opinions on music, film, women, and fashion, have always been influential, and his hoops knowledge--which he often expounds upon on his must-check twitter feed--is critical. Zone was cool enough to give me his opinions on the recent NBA happenings, and what follows is our interview: Dr.Lawyer IndianChief: Why do you think that in the US, NBA basketball consistently been third in popularity behind the NFL and MLB for the past few years?
J-Zone: Because there haven't been characters in the NBA like they used to have. Basketball players are unbelievably bland and boring individuals. With the exception of Ron Artest, AI, Shaq and Delonte West, who is quote worthy? These dudes are 28 years old and all they talk about is playing X-Box and being a Drake fan. In baseball, you have Carlos Zambrano dismembering a Gatorade machine with a baseball bat, then have Pedro Martinez claiming he'd wake up the ghost of Babe Ruth and drill him in the ass, with a pitch. Then you have Pedro throwing old man Don Zimmer to the ground and watching him roll about 5 miles. Baseball players still have jheri curls, which is a great thing. Keyshawn Johnson gave the NFL some life when he left a voicemail to his exes new man saying “he as nothing but free time” to whup his ass. Entertainment. The NBA has lost so much of it because these dudes have zero personality. Dr. LIC: You've been pretty open on twitter about the Lebron situation and predicting he won't win a ring. Who do you think presents the biggest problem for the Heat? Do the Heat even make it out of the East? J-Zone: It's easy to say “we just wanna win”, and insinuate that there will be no ego issues. OK. That’s D-Wade’s team. Remember when everyone packed up and went to LA in 2004, only to get mopped by Detroit? Those guys weren’t on the same level as LeBron, Bosh and Wade in terms of individual star power, but everyone just gave em the chip after the trades went down. And now, teams will be anxious to whup Miami's ass after LeBron guaranteed a bunch of titles. Despite all that superstar talent, I still don't see them getting it done. I’d still want Wade to take the last shot too, and I can’t see LeBron rolling with that when the time comes. I'm curious to see if they can get past Boston or Orlando, let alone whoever comes out of the west.
Dr. LIC: What is Lebron's legacy now? If he does end up winning a ring, does he redeem himself? J-Zone: No. He's in a spot where he can't really win no matter how the chips fall. I don’t blame him for leaving Cleveland, but I thought just following the wave to Miami was a little weak. The difference in Jordan, Magic and Kobe -who I’m sure LeBron wants his name mentioned alongside- was they wanted to beat everyone, including their fellow superstars, with the help of one other key guy and a good supporting cast. Get some real help, but forming a dream team takes some of the fun out of it. I personally would’ve liked to see him in Chicago with Noah, Rose and Deng, but whatever. He’s fucked either way, it’s a Catch 22. If he wins, they’ll say he took the easy route and if he loses, he’ll be tagged as a bum. I’m sure he saw that going in though.
Dr. LIC: Any thoughts on LeBron thanking Akron, Ohio, but not Cleveland in his recent farewell newspaper ad? [Ed. note, this was before LeBron caved and thanked Cleveland in Akron]
J-Zone: Neither LeBron or Cleveland owe each other anything. Its like your first girlfriend, your whole social circle knows you as an item. But you reach a point where you hit a stalemate and break up before you marry. If the dude goes on TV and tells the world they’re breaking up before he tells the girl or if when shit goes wrong the girl tears him down, both are equally at fault. LeBron doing the whole ESPN thing was corny and arrogant in an unlikable way, but at the same time, grown ass men in Cleveland running around burning jerseys when they should’ve been at work or home with their kids is even stupider. It’s big business, players make moves all the time. If a 25 year old athlete is all your city has to be proud of, you’re in deep shit. Fuckouttahere. He leaves and the entire city nosedives? That‘s deep.
I knew he was outta there when the Cavs choked in the playoffs for the umpteenth time and they got booed crazy. And how many rings does LeBron have? Last time I checked, one, the one around his bathtub. So he, ESPN and everyone who felt indebted were all frontin. Only Kobe deserved that type of attention for a god damn trade and he probably wouldn‘t have even done that. Everyone involved was super corny. Unemployment is documented at 9%, and realistically its around 20%. At the time, oil was gushing into the Gulf. The amount of attention everyone gave that situation was disgusting. It warranted one day of headlines, no more. That shit was on the cover of the newspapers for a week straight. I thought Miami was a soft move, but at the same time this is a business. Fuckouttahere.
Dr. LIC: What are the Celtics trying to do stacking up old guys like Shaq and Jermaine O'Neal, following the signing of Rasheed Wallace last year?
J-Zone: Get endorsement deals with Ben-Gay and Motrin.
Dr. LIC: I know you've never been much of a Knicks fan, but for comparison sake, How can you contrast the D'Antoni style Knicks with Riley's Knicks with Van Gundy's Knicks, style-wise?
J-Zone: By their activities in May. Two of em are either still playing or explaining why they just lost. One of em has been done for over a month and is sampling D’Anillo Gallinari’s new summertime Cibatta bread.
Dr. LIC: Also, did you ever have any allegiance to the Knicks? If not, who did you follow growing up in NY? J-Zone: I used to like the Knicks, especially in 1991-92. That’s when Greg Anthony jumped off the bench in a Hawaiian shirt and got into a brawl. But believe it or not, I was always a Blazers fan. Clyde Drexler was my favorite player growing up. The 1992 finals when they played Chicago was when I gave up and finally gave Jordan his props as the best ever. You couldn’t tell me shit about the Portland Blazers. Clyde, Terry Porter, Cliff Robinson, they were fuckin legit. I knew I wasn’t a die hard Knicks fan when I was cracking up at Reggie Miller just killin em and throwing Spike the choker. I watched that shit live, and I was lovin every minute of it. I was rootin for Reggie because he had the balls to straight shit on the Garden. He left without crutches, so in that case, the Knicks deserved to lose. I would've broke his legs the way he shitted on us!
Dr. LIC: Does Amare Stoudemire offer the Knicks any improvement over last year?
J-Zone: No. Well, maybe if Steve Nash finds a way to join the Knicks.
Dr. LIC: How do you feel about Amare's well-publicized trip to Israel and his quest to find his spiritual roots in Judaism?
J-Zone: Hey whatever makes the man happy, that’s his personal life.
Dr. LIC: What happened to Allen Iverson?
J-Zone: He’s probably back in the studio to do a part two to “40 Bars” and doing an album with T-Pain. Now that he’s out of the league, David Stern won’t care. I respect AI but he's the NBA's greatest all-time 21 player.
Dr. LIC: What has to happen for the Knicks to go .500 or better this year?
J-Zone: A whole lot of forfeits in the Atlantic division.
Dr. LIC: Any thoughts on the Nets moving to Brooklyn?
J-Zone: As much as downtown Brooklyn has been gentrified in recent years, the Nets’ audience will be primarily comprised of Idaho natives that are thrilled to be in the hometown of that Jay-Z guy.
Dr. LIC: Ron Artest or Lamar Odom? Who do you roll with?
J-Zone: Artest all day! They’re both from Queens, Ron is from Queensbridge and Odom is from Jamaica. Odom grew up not too far from me, I live in Jamaica. But marrying a Kardashian is not hip-hop. Thanking your psychiatrist after winning a title is very hip-hop. Ron-Ron all fuckin day.
Dr. LIC: Any other predictions for this season?
J-Zone: Delonte West will get caught on a Harley hiding a 22 in the bell of a sousaphone. That's my main man though, and my twin!
In my perfect world, I would have an Eames recliner. Also, there would be a band making music today that's influenced by old soul/funk without sounding derivative. And they would be into hoops. And there would be a serious record dude lurking in their ranks. The existence of such a band, and the chance to pick their brains, would be almost self-serving for me; I'm always knee-deep in NBA, and when I need air, I pretend to be a record collector. Which is, as some of you know, so much less stressful than following box scores.
As it turns out, dreams do come true. Not long after I first heard Milwaukee's Kings Go Forth, (late on this, I know), I got an email from their publicist pointing me in the direction of a Bucks vid using KGF's "One Day" as the soundtrack. I ended up sending some questions on NBA stuff for guitarist Dan Flynn, and record nerd queries for bassist Andy Noble. It might be the ultimate in narcissistic music writing, or the moment where I am made whole as a person (at least Internet-wise), but for real, you need to hear this shit. We'll even be running a contest: Send me your best pairing of a rare record with a semi-obscure NBA/ABA/Eastern League player, along with a little bit of explanation, and you'll be in the running to win a copy of Kings Go Forth's mightily-acclaimed debut, The Outsiders Are Back. Send entries to freedarko at gmail dot com.
Oh, and I got my chair.
Bethlehem Shoals: One of the things FD has been continually baffled by is the relationship between music and sports. Sometimes it seems merely aesthetic, other times,there's a deeper kinship there. I'm sick of being told that basketball is like jazz, and on the other hand, basketball = hip-hop is almost too fraught to get into. So, the blanket question: What do you think?
Dan Flynn: I think this question comes down to if you're looking at it from a player's viewpoint, or more a spectator's. I play both music and ball, and even when I'm watching/listening I'm doing so as an active participant—putting myself into the situation. I find a lot of similarities, and I think of both as forms of self expression through non-verbal communication. In each you have a framework; in basketball an overall game plan with some set plays and defensive schemes, and in music you have a song with a verse, chorus, etc. But over that song you can improvise. Take "One Day"—there's a basic drum pattern, conga pattern, bass and chordal pattern, but really the whole rhythm section is improvising over that framework, listening and playing off of each other. We've never played that song the same way twice. And [vocalist] Blackwolf never sings it the same way. It's group improv, which is very similar to say, running an offensive set in basketball. You never know what the defense is going to do and you need to adjust, you need to improvise.
Basketball is more relatable than any other sport because of the way it flows—few sports have the same motion. Maybe hockey and soccer, but definitely not football or baseball. Basketball's all about rhythm, and of course so is music. Especially music with some looseness to it like soul, funk and jazz, you can feel that push and pull, that ebb and flow.
BS: Kings Go Forth is a band that really reflects not only a respect for the past, but a real interest in the self-proclaimed "record guy" culture. After all, you have Mingering Mike doing the cover for the new record. You guys do have a very distinctive sound, one that's not just run-of-the-mill funk revival. I keep hearing, or at least hearing about, these random records that do cast a new perspective on a tradition. Any particular "unusual" records that really influenced you?
Andy Noble: Well, I'd like to think I'm on the front line of the record discoveries, as I am out there everyday digging, both traditionally and through talking to old artists/producers/etc. There's nothing I love more than uncovering something that was previously unknown and has musical validity to today's scene. Some of the things probably sound better today than when they were initially produced. But, as far as influence is concerned, it's not like there are magic rare records that I draw from that distinguish our sound from other groups'. I am equally as influenced by a Stevie Nicks' song that is playing in my girlfriends car as I am by some private-press, one-known copy spiritual jazz LP that I found last summer. Which is to say, I am influenced by all of it.
BS: Do you ever get anyone questioning the authenticity of soul/funk coming out of Milwaukee? It doesn't have quite the same tradition as, say, Chicago.
AN: Well, that's not really a matter of opinion, it's a matter of looking at my box of over 200 locally produced soul 45s from the 60s-80s and saying , yes, this was/is a thing. Hundreds of men,women, and children from this city entered mom-and-pop studios, probably inspired partly by the local successes of Harvey Scales and the Esquires, and cut some pretty great music. In my opinion, the sound of Milwaukee R&B would best be characterized as "low-budget" Chicago or "low-budget Midwest" Soul. We did not have the infrastructure of a Chicago or a Detroit as far as access to professional arrangers, string sections, etc., so the scope of the recordings are usually a little toned-down from what you would hear from those cities. I think that sound continues through our record, for sure.
BS: What players today would you say either match your guys's sound, or just generally the spirit of this style of music? Are the Bucks too scrappy and goofy? Can I cast a vote for Brandon Jennings as the lone exception?
Dan Flynn: That's kind of a tough question, I feel like I'm really reaching here. But it's funny, I'd say the scrappiness of the Bucks this year definitely fits us, and Jennings in particular. Another guy might be Manu Ginobili. We have a lot of excellent, seasoned players in our group, but at the same time I feel we often approach things with more of a punk/indie rock attitude. In fact the use of the word "janky" is pretty common amongst ourselves to describe what we're doing. That's what I feel separates us from the other groups out there in our style, as well as some of the older groups; we're not trying to be smooth. We're not afraid to be rough, ragged and raw—we don't care how we look doing it.
As far as style or aesthetics, he's not current but a year or so ago I DVR'd a bunch of early Jordan college and NBA games on ESPN Classics. I guess I hadn't remembered how hard he was rocking those Dr. J moves back then, and it was really interesting to see. He was somewhere between the style of the late '70s NBA and what he'd later become, which I think is pretty much still the modern offensive NBA style. You could see it was there, just hadn't developed yet. I guess that's where I see us, one foot in the past yet trying to see how to apply those classic elements to the present and future.
BS: Have you ever had stuff played at Bucks game, or gotten feedback from Bucks (or their fans)? That vid of Bucks footage and "One Day" worked surprisingly well.
DF: Not that I'm aware of. That video is a good fit though, but I have to say that song seems to be a good fit for all kinds of things. I occasionally play pickup games with Tony Smith, who does some commentary for the Bucks (and of course is a top player in his own right), I might ask him next time I see him. Actually I just wanted to drop his name. I remember a year or so ago someone mentioning a possibility of us playing at halftime, don't know what happened to that.
BS: How about some top five lists for the people?
Dan Flynn: For the record Steve Nash is my favorite player. But if I was putting together an all-time best as far as a team that would crush anyone I wouldn't pick him. Too much of a defensive liability. So at point, although not known for his D I'd have Magic. At shooting guard I'd have Oscar Robertson (yeah, I'm from MKE, but can you blame me?). Small forward MJ, gotta have him in there somewhere I guess (swing man?). Power forward maybe a healthy Kevin McHale. Wait, scratch McHale—I'd like to see Garnett and Bill Russell together. Defense.
Andy Noble: The five important records in my life:
-Love, self-titled debut LP. Soundtrack to my 20s. -Pharoah Sanders, "The Creator Has A Master Plan". Saved my life a few times. -The Impressions, "Mighty Mighty Spade and Whitey". I started digging for records because of this tune. -Little Beaver, "Do Right Man" 45. SAADIA. First "big boy" record in my box. -The Specials More Specials LP. Taught me that a "genre" band could completely break the mold and make something brand new out of a traditional form.
BS: Do you ever watch games on mute? If so, with what music on?
Dan Flynn: No, I don't. I no longer have cable, so when I'm watching it's mostly in the company of several others, or I'll have a game on the radio at work. Think I'm gonna have to get ESPN 360 next season. But I don't know if I'd like music at the same time, might take away from the focus/intensity.
BS: Describe your relationship to the past and the tradition, insofar as thinking about KGF's sound and style is concerned.
Andy Noble: Obviously we draw fairly heavily from the well of independent 60s-80s black american music, especially in the aesthetic department. I would like to think that the content, both lyrically and emotionally, of the music is as contemporary or "timeless" as anything else out there right now though. At least that's what I'm shooting for.
Thanks again to Dan and Andy for answering these questions, which were a lot more obnoxious in original form. Don't be shy about entering the contest! Or, save yourself the trouble and cop The Outsiders Are Back the old-fashioned way.
Slippery slope, my friends. Exile opens up all sorts of dark doorways, like when someone saw fit to start calling Iguodala "Iggy Hop" during the 2008 playoffs. I wish I knew how to work Google Vid so I could put Rondo highlights over this.
Note: Put together quickly because I felt I had to.
I've never really been one to deify rock stars. Maybe that's because I've spent much of my grown listening years fucking with black music. James Brown's image was almost laughably self-conscious, Coltrane or Dolphy were more the monastic type, and with hip-hop, ego was refined into a DIY isotope. There's just not much room for Byron there, especially when the starting point involves Ringo Starr.
That said, when A. and myself went to Memphis, we stopped to gawk at Chilton's childhood home, the building that was Ardent, and the former site of the Big Star grocery star. Oh, and a confession: as tacky as I found it when some coverage of Katrina concerned itself with the search for Chilton—unlike any number of other missing musicians, he was a transplant identified more with Memphis—I did feel something resembling concern. Can you be worried about indestructible pop royalty? Isn't that somehow beneath you, and them, if they're being given that special genius treatment?
When I heard that Alex Chilton had died, I grew sadder than usual. Not because the musical landscape has shifted, or an important voice has been silenced. Someone whose music has affected me considerably is gone. The least I can do is show a little grief.
If it weren't for those nagging Box Tops (the first rule of obits: critical acuity need not apply), today we'd be treated to nothing but paeans to #1 Record, Radio City, and Sister Lovers. Thank god for "The Letter"—it provides an easy hook for Chilton's historical importance, without having to delve into the shadow-genre of power pop, which Big Star pioneered as its own kind of atavism. That's where #1 Record hits the mark, and sparkles to this day. Pristine, deadly just beneath, and altogether formulaic—if more than capable of pushing at these strictures. That's the Chilton (and notably, the Bell) of the easy historical record. It's the first hour of the movie that will never get made, and for those in love with the pure power of pop music, well, that other iteration of "power pop" tells you all you need to know. There is something unmistakably chaste, even down to Chilton's teen-ish rawk and Bell's repression, that makes #1 Record an unmistakable document of a mastery of a form and therefore, godhead material. And, at the same time, one whose humility is well-meaning, if not altogether convincing.
That's the inviolate Chilton, the one who makes perfect sense, the tear-jerker and rabble-rouser who lends himself to pop greatness. Then, things start to go bad. Bell leaves. Radio City, a rougher, less focused follow-up, jumbles up Chilton's riff-and-hook mojo. "O My Soul" and "Life is White" are jagged, rousing, neatly miserable, and at times incapable of reigning in their shards of melody. At the same time, "I'm in Love with A Girl" and "Morpha Too" are Chilton's two most plaintive, and plain-spoken, bits of songcraft from the entire Big Star period. Formally, the would-be pop god was in shambles, wandering in and out of his own countryside. And yet when Chilton sat down and essayed "I'm in Love," it was as if his ear for innocence was more vivid than ever. Lacking an outlet in songs, it was squirreled away into these fragments that were almost unbearable in their intensity. And, in retrospect, their fragility. Even if I'm fairly sure one was about dope.
Radio City, then, is the exact point at which Chilton's god-like powers begin to fail him, or at least come into conflict with the "damaged genius" modality that he carried until the end. With this record, though, you're struck by just how personal those highly-refined bits of pop remain. Things are starting to crumble, and yet Chilton wants to hang on to this pop essence. The meat is gone, but its bird-like bones keep fluttering. Chilton isn't in control of it, even though he's written it—he's chasing after it, hoping the swaggering, disjointed mess of "Daisy Glaze" isn't all he's left with.
Alex Chilton seems as stunned at Radio City as we are, especially its closing tracks. There's nothing noble in his crisis, nor in the original sound falling to pieces. Make no mistake, it's an undeniably awesome record, but one that ends with its author wondering how to hold onto himself, as well as what to make of the lurching, violent songs he's ended up with. It's not perfect, or beautifully tragic. Radio City is, in its inability to side with either pop perfect or art damage, is about as ordinarily human as it gets. Neither you nor I could have made it, but its displacement is undeniably accessible.
All of which brings us, predictably, to the bummer majesty of Sister Lovers. Actually, for a record so identified with drugs shot into the neck and utter professional collapse, there's plenty of brightness here. Yet it's atmospheric, awash in risk-taking, and impossible to place in time—a sense of loneliness and languor that sounds like Chilton dissolved and deconstructed. "Kangaroo" attempts to tell a boy/girl story. But notice how the line "I saw you staring out in space" lingers in the air, gets cross-cut by feedback and a crumbling guitar shop, may or not be about outer space, and renders "I" and "you" meaningless terms. This isn't a retreat into the avant-garde. For all its strangeness, Sister Lovers is mostly about Chilton trying to resolve the binary lurking at the close of Radio City.
All the brutality, and confusion, of the deceptively soft "Sister/Lovers" is Chilton trying to negotiate that inner conflict, albeit under the influence of huge quantities of morphine. There are fleeting bits here that, for all their visionary grandeur, are also fraught with something undeniably human. "Kangaroo" or "Holocaust" aren't archetypes, they're one man's struggle between pop simplicity and something far darker. Were it a perfect fusion, Chilton would be just another smarty-pants. But instead, we get some of the most high-stakes, and undeniably wrenching, music ever made by white people. At this point, Chilton has been a recording artist his whole adult life. Here, he struggles to hold it all together, totalize his experience, and just maybe, save himself. That's not faultless, or cartoon-ish, work of gods. Sister Lovers is an impossibly wrenching, revealing look at the dilemma of being Alex Chilton; the wall of pretense is, in Chilton's case, a lack of one. It could be any of us, just with different grist.
I don't think Alex Chilton is better, or greater, or more important than me. In fact, because of Sister Lovers, I think of him as more like me (or you) than other musicians. He just said it better, and cut deeper, than I ever could. And for that, I'll take some time to mourn. Not out of obligation or fear, but for his willingness to turn himself inside-out to such an extent that many were convinced he was hiding.
R.I.P. Willie Mitchell, here are my three most favorite productions of his that were easy to post. Missing: Jimmy McCracklin's "Stay Away From That Monkey" and O.V. Wright's "I Don't Do Windows."
All old musicians eventually go, but this man was an institution.
**** Dwyane Wade, Number Three Guard. Highly unexpected set from an alto player best known for his pitch-perfect standards and ballads. Here, Wade stretches out in various spare trio settings. With piano and drums, he sets up dense thickets of squelches and squeals; piano and bass bring out his deliberate, elegiac side like never before; in the more conventional sax/bass/drums format, Wade tears through angular post-bop originals like a man pushing his creative capacity to the point of exhaustion, even collapse.
*** Udonis Haslem, Forty Forward. Haslem had always been a sturdy pianist in the Bobby Timmons vein, but when got the chance to record for Blue Note, he took advantage of the extra rehearsal time and created something far more ambitious. Sticking to the standard soul jazz trio, and finding himself constantly returning to its cliches, Haslem nevertheless aims high with these forty short pieces about his conversion to Islam and travels in the Middle East. Engimatic bassist Babar, making his only appearance on record here, is the only one whose solos consistently realize this exalted mood.
***1/2 Mario Chalmers, C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S. There were plenty of other trumpeters around New York with the same slashing tone, technical facility, and knack for heady skeins of harmonic sophistication. Sons of Miles and Dizzy alike, they were a dime a dozen, each more impressive than the next and thus somehow bringing the whole bunch down. What makes Marion Chalmers's debut so remarkable is that not only does he capture a moment, he transcends it due in no small part due to the fast company he keeps.
***** Michael Beasley, Forward. Beasley was a prodigy in the truest, and most unfortunate, sense. He was barely in his twenties when this masterpiece was recorded, and already had several standards to his name. Forward was unlike any other jazz being made at the time, and it remains elusive to this day. Employing a crude form of multi-tracking, unorthodox combinations like flugelhorn, banjo, and bagpipes, and sometimes changing instruments mid-improvisation, it's nevertheless Beasley's raw, vibrant piano that steals the show.
**1/2 Carlos Arroyo, Number Eight. Blue Note rarely attempted to cash in on trends, but one of its few truly venal records is also one of the strangest. Arroyo was a largely forgettable salsa pianist with progressive tendencies. Cutting Latin versions of the music from the then-obscure British television series The Prisoner falls somewhere between crass opportunism and off-beat pop culture plundering. Arroyo is all over the place, sometimes solemn, oftentimes festive, as if he were at once trying to take the material too seriously and reject its source. A curiosity worth hearing.
*** Quentin Richardson, Five. An oddly iconic title for such a workmanlike set. Richardson's trombone can be heard on a slew of other recordings from this period, ranging from proto-funk to cerebral cool. He's the sort of player, and writer, whose solos and compositions typically include at least one passage of utter ingenuity and another that borders on pap. Five is his only solo effort. While far from the archetypal quintet outting, it's nevertheless admirable from start to finish.
** Daequan Cook, Number Fourteen Guard. Cook was a sporadic, slapdash drummer best known for his hi-hat flourishes and otherwise low-key timekeeping. This is the kind of record that should discourage drummers from ever thinking they can take the lead in the studio, even if the label's put them up to it.
Read Dr. LIC on myth across all sports. Check Joey lamenting his age. But if you really want to get ready for tomorrow, watch this music video from outsider dancehall seer—and gung ho NBA fan—SNIPA, and maybe even his statement to the media about track. Not since that "Ron Artest" joint has a song gotten me so amped for the season. Especially the underwater season.
Not only is Polvo my favorite band ever, they're also arguably the biggest sports fans in indie rock history. They're playing the Crocodile in Seattle tonight, and you should see them if you live in my city. Dave Brylawski has done a ton of press lately, but hopefully there's something new in here. Oh, and sorry for the shortage of pictures, I wanted to get this up before tonight!
Bethlehem Shoals: Okay, so I guess we're going to try and do this formal interview now. I'm having trouble not just asking all the random fan questions I've stored up over the years.
Dave Brylawski: Well, ask them.
BS: That would be totally unprofessional. Like, should I ask what the hell the songs were generally about? The Recluse tried to convince me they were all about girls.
DB: Some girls, some mature life stuff. I don't know. Probably a lot of them aren't about much. Abstract feelings. We're not a topical band, songwriting-wise.
BS: Let me try something more journalist-y. How do you feel about now being referred to as, among other things, one of the defining guitar bands of the indie era? No offense, but I never realized Polvo had so much influence.
DB: Actually, we're in this weird zone. A lot of the press that's written about us now is about how small we are, and how we sabotaged ourselves and never really capitalized on [our success]. We're in this netherworld where we're not big, but we're big enough that we're still playing 20 years later.
BS: Do you think you've gotten bigger in death than in life?
DB: I don't know if we've gotten bigger, but we've definitely had some staying power that I never would've predicted when we stopped playing in nineties. The funny thing is, we stopped playing in 1998, and for a couple years, it died a very quick death, and you didn't really hear much about Polvo. But then a few years later, it started to get back to me that people hadn't forgotten Polvo, which was nice, and unexpected, and a little strange, actually.
I don't know why some bands get lost in time and others stay on people's minds, and we're fortunate that we did. There were a lot of good ones from our era, and I don't know why someone would remember us as opposed to, say, Unwound.
BS: It might have something to do with the trouble people have always had figuring out your sound. I always got annoyed when Polvo was described as "math-y."
DB: There’s a lot of math rock bands I really like. I think our umbrage with that descriptor is more that we didn’t feel like we were completely worthy of it. Polvo definitely has a primitive-ness that’s antithetical to math-rock. I think it’s just more like our stopping and starting within a song. Most of our songs are 4/4. Sometimes we slip in some extra some stuff, but we’re pretty straightforward, time-signature wise. We get asked about it all the time, though. I think because it's on our Wikipedia page.
BS: And before that there were the Sonic Youth comparisons.
DB: If you read our very early interviews, early 90s, one of the questions is always "who are your influences?" And it’s like so obvious who are influences are that we would say, “We don’t have any influences.” But it’s so fucking obvious that Husker Du, Meat Puppets, and Sonic Youth are our influences. We became more comfortable later on acknowledging how important they were to us.
The main thing we share with Sonic Youth is that they’re very much a rock band. As experimental as they are, they’re still at the core a rock band that pushes whatever envelopes they push and I think we share that element too. We’re a rock band. It’s not more mystical than that, unfortunately; there’s no mysticism involved. Two guitars, bass, drums.
BS: At some point after Polvo had broken up, I put on "Dancing Days" and was struck by how much it reminded me of Today's Active Lifestyles.
DB: I always sort of felt like Polvo was sort of a classic rock band, even in the early nineties. That was always a touchstone. To me, it was a continuation of the mindset of bands from the sixties who still wanted to rock but feel like we had the freedom to do some other things, other than than writing standard bridges and choruses. I don't like calling it "experimental," but just kind of pushing it a little bit and playing with it. Psychedelic, I guess. But again, to me we are just a rock band, I don’t think we’re that left field. But people seem to think we are. I don't know where that comes from, really.
BS: Seriously?
DB: I think a band like Thinking Fellers or Sun City Girls, they're pretty left-field. Compared to them, Polvo's like a bar band.
BS: Okay, onto sports. So I hear you hate Roy Williams.
DB: No, I don't hate Roy Williams! I have a complicated relationship with Roy Williams. I definitely appreciate what he’s brought to Carolina. The whole Kansas thing two years ago was sort of tough. Like our friends who think about this stuff, we think having to play Kansas, Roy didn’t know how to deal with that. It got into the kids’ heads a little bit. There was a lot of leading up to that, Roy saying he didn’t know how to coach against Kansas, Roy saying, "Half my heart’s still in Kansas." You don’t want to hear that shit as a Heels fan. That game was crazy. That ruined Billy Packer’s career, I think. When Billy Packer said, "it’s over" like four minutes into the game when Kansas got up by like 26 (Carolina did get back in that game). But that left a bad taste in my mouth which was finally sort of cleaned out by last year, of course. I like Roy. There is something John Edwards-y about him though. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it's that "aw-shucks"-ness about them that feels kind of forced.
I miss Dean, is what it comes down to. There will never be another coach like Dean. Dean was a god growing up. I was 13 when they won in 1982, but I remember way before that, when they had Walter Davis and Tommy LaGarde and lost to Al Maguire and Marquette. I went to Carmichael to welcome the team home and everything. When you're young and a Carolina fan, those are the best years, even though they didn't win a championship. That's when I used to cry every time they lost. They'd lose to State and I would cry. God, Norm Sloan and those plaid pants.
BS: It was really hard for me to accept that UNC players didn't all go on to become All-Stars.
DB: Well, I'm older than you, so Walter Davis, Bob McAdoo, Phil Ford . . . they had amazing pros.
BS: But see, I thought Chapel Hill was the center of the basketball universe. If I saw Pete Chillcut on the street, I thought I'd had an important life-experience. Then to see guys turn into non-entities at the next level . . . it just didn't make sense to me.
DB: But maybe it's like Polvo. You get these mixed messages. There's Pete Chillcut . . . but there's Phil Ford. There's Pete Butko. . but there's James Worthy. There's always enough reinforcement there. I. When I was a young kid growing up at Carolina, they had the best basketball player to ever play the game and the best defensive football player to ever play the game. Carolina and athletics have always been sort of magical to me. [Polvo's bass player Steve Popson] is going to kill me, because he's a huge State fan and hates Carolina. He's a weird guy, though. His dad played for the Redskins and the Redskins are his least favorite team in the NFL.
I don't know why I'm linking this to Polvo, but it's that same kind of netherworld where there's just enough information to confirm your fantasy that Polvo is special and magical. I'm not saying Polvo is special and magical, but to me I can sit here and say "oh, we're just a rock band," but maybe there's just enough that . . . I'm not going to say transcends that, but lifts it out of it. We're not a bar band, even if I sometimes say we are.
BS: What would say was Polvo's most bar band-y show?
DB: Like our third show, I don’t know how, but we got $300 to play this club in Wilmington, North Carolina. Three hundred dollars at the time was exorbitant. After Cor-Crane Secret came out we would play shows and make $50 a night. I don’t know what they were expecting. We only had five songs and had to play everything twice. It was awful. They didn’t get their money’s worth.
I do have a lot of respect for bar bands. It's just as valid as anything Thinking Fellers does.
BS: Back to what you just said about Polvo and UNC: I'm beginning to think you don't have any perspective on Polvo whatsoever.
DB: I probably don't, because it’s a progression of what I’ve been doing since I was 13 years old, playing in my bedroom. I don’t have that perspective that it’s anything but expressing myself through my guitar and expressing myself with my friends. That’s another thing about Polvo too, is that we were friends for a long time before we played together. I hope that shows.
BS: The music has always been a lot less self-conscious than one would expect. Especially live.
DB: That's the thing about "experimental" that makes me bristle a little bit. I don’t think we see ourselves as wizards concocting magic spells. We really do just get in the van and play. We’re more in that lineages and that’s maybe because I read too many rock bios. But we’re friends that just started playing rock music and have fun.
BS: I've got to say, though, it did kind of creep me out that you were playing this fucked-up music but weren't particularly artsy or eccentric.
DB: I think people do sort of freak out on the fact that we're just normal, sports-loving guys. We're not frat boys, or conservative computer programmers, but I think it is a little head-scratching for some people that we're so normal.
BS: Well, that's why I found you a lot more disturbing than I did Ash. At least he seemed to fit the part.
DB: I think that's probably somewhat conscious. I never bought into the whole art vs. sports dichotomy, like that you can’t be into both because I really think sports is art, sort of. It’s personal expression and it’s very pure. I’ve always been a sports fan and have been able to see the transcendence of sports. How is that different than art? I’m not equating the two necessarily; I'm not saying LeBron James is equal to Michelangelo. But it’s personal expression and there’s a purity to it. I think my experiences with sports are more playing them. I always sort of fancy myself a decent athlete. The two times I’ve felt the freest is playing basketball and playing guitar. That element of mindfulness, that you’re in your head but you’re not actually in your head, analytically.
I do have insight into why that split happened because I think that a lot of people who are into art had bad experiences when they were young with sports. That’s why being from Carolina is so important. They’re basing that on elementary school or middle school being thrown in with a bunch of angry, misanthropic jocks and not being good at sports, having that imprinted like, “Sports is dumb and inelegant”. But growing up in Carolina, all the cool rock bands grew up loving Carolina sports. It was sort of more just something you did, like playing guitar.
BS: I wonder if there's any other general explanation for sports/indie rock crossover, or if it's sometimes just a function of the individual.
DB: There are so many similarities to music. It's personal expression if you're playing it, but there's also the social function of rooting for a team and going to games. Why wouldn’t you like both? In Chapel Hill, it's not like that. Even the music geeks like Carolina basketball because it's just what you do. But yeah, there is community aspect to it, just like the indie rock thing. You go to the Cradle and hang out and see all your friends, or you watch a Carolina basketball game and see all your friends. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter. They go together.
I don't know exactly how noz, proprietor of the world's famous Cocaine Blunts, came to tell me he had this record. It was definitely off-hand, like "if I can find it and you're interested, I'll send you a rip." My hand went numb with anticipation, but even that was only a taste of how awesome this is. Well, more how awesome it is that it exists. Happy Hall of Fame, MJ!!!!!!!
MOST PEOPLE PANIC FOR A WAY OUT. BUT MYSELF, I IMAGINE A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS TO GET MYSELF OUT.
For reasons I don't get, the DivShare player sometimes turns up blank unless you go to the actual post URL (as opposed to plain old FD.com). Here's a link. Sorry, and someone explain.
Nothing FD-worthy is happening, and I have a day gig, a book, and an impending wedding to worry about. So feast upon this clip of Kareem playing congos on one of my favorite modal beginner's standards, and try and decide what this means for BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ.
Speaking of which, earlier today Ziller and I got bored and tried to figure out which positions would correspond to which instrument if basketball WERE jazz. You'd think that soloing would equate roughly to scoring, because of style and voice and improvisation and all that. But we agreed that, in a conventional quintet, the piano comes closest to approximating the role of the point guard. Things got really screwed up when I suggested that scoring might actually equal drums, since both are alternately propulsive, matter-of-fact, jarring, and still. That would make the big men . . . the horn section?
So basketball still isn't jazz, but does offer a interesting inversion of the usual listening hierarchy, and maybe some compositional cues. Please tell me what you think, and damn, I wish I could get this video to play.
It's rarely stated explicitly, but FD has a long and lasting connection to hip-hop. For all our jazz pretensions and obvious Pitchfork ties, many of us were shaped and formed by rap music, and spent many long hours trying to make sense of our place as fans and, in some cases, participants. All I know is that, no matter what they take from me, they can't take away the first time I heard Rakim, or Straight Outta Compton, or The Infamous. I've more or less repressed all the time I spent flirting with the tape trade underground, but certain albums, however obvious, are as much a part of my musical consciousness as, say, The Band (which came way later, by the way). I will even now unapologetically assert that Wu-Tang changed my life, without leaning too hard on Cuban Linx, but only if I only get credit for knowing most every Guru lyric by heart.
Why am I bothering to tell you all this? Well, mostly as a show of support for Dr. LIC's Straight Bangin' guest post on "why I hate rap now". It was supposed to be a "top 10 albums of the century" joint, but when the Doctor was blocked, and only go going when he realized what the problem was. I didn't even try and bother. Maybe I was always a tourist, maybe that "N.W.A. and Public Enemy were like punk rock" line had more truth to it than I thought. All I know is that, after having intently followed hip-hop since I first bought Raising Hell and yes, Licensed to Ill (gateway pass) in third grade, I'm just not interested these days. Did I give up hope? Grow out of it? Prove that I never had any place in it to begin with? I don't lose much sleep over ferreting out the answer.
But like I said, I think the good Doctor's post does a lot to explain why I've drifted further and further away, and right now own probably like three recordings from the 21st. My list would probably have included The Cold Vein, Supreme Clientale, Philadelphia Freeway, The Black Album, and Got It 4 Cheap 2. And yeah, I know there's definitely a problem/disconnect there, which is why I'll plead alienation instead of (for once) reaching for overwrought justification.
UPDATE: To reiterate, if you're in New York, and want to see me and most every other sports blogger of note on panels, attend Blogs With Balls.
Am I the only person on the planet who didn't know that Paulette Reaves is the mother of Josh Smith? Her current site has some candids of her with Amare, Nash, and others.
Like you need FD to tell you that LeBron is almighty. Read The Baseline tomorrow for my thoughts on the game. Some other random shit will probably show up here around the same time.
UPDATE: Excuse whatever chippiness follows, because my internet connection is once again totally unreliable and it makes my increasingly professional life a total mess. Fuck writing serious emails on a phone. Anyway, I know I've been scarce around these parts. It's got a lot to do with the new gig; I'm trying to both 1) figure out the hang of it 2) divert traffic from here to there (sorry if that's a huge sinister surprise). So if anyone has advice or feedback on either of these counts, let me know. I can pretty much write whatever I want, and it's really only the recaps/previews I've gotten bogged down with, but every writer is these days (power of repetition = power + repetition. Which means no need for "experts" after a point.)
That said, from last night's Bron/Magic post, here's the FD money shot that would've fit very nicely into this site's special place:
The Magic have been better in this series than they've been at any time during the season (or playoffs, of course). That Turkoglu shot, a mirror image of Lewis's heroics from Game 1, looked like it had capped off, or kicked off, a new glory era for the Magic. No matter how unlikely it all seemed, it would be damn hard to argue with after this. I know that athletes can taste victory, but for once, I understood why that language exists.
But the Magic don't have LeBron James. And while we know stars can lose, upsets can happen, and our preconceptions can be wrong, James is the ultimate superstar. In that, he's both breathtaking and boring. We're watching a career unfold that's already HOF-bound, maybe even the best ever, and yet it all feels so inevitable. And so it was with that shot. Of course James would make it and put everything in its right place. The second -- and yeah, it was literally a second -- the ball went his way, you thought "this is how it's supposed to happen, isn't it?" You realize that "scripted" and "storybook" differ only in connotation.
It had to happen, and as shocking as it was, you could only be so surprised. But isn't that what makes LeBron so ridiculous? He's conditioned us to not only expect the impossible, but take it for granted.
See, it lives! And yes, I took out two really weird sentences that are what happens when I write too late, under some deadline of some sort. Those always make me anxious, as opposed to the sense of urgency, or competitiveness, that used to spur me on when it was totally self-imposed. Welcome to America, I guess.
-While we're on the subject of me saying shit that could potentially hurt my future interest, I find it weird that in that fat dude swimming adidas ad, KG is cast as both less (cardboard shoes) and more (world champs!) fortunate in the grand socio-economic scheme of things than Jim, or whatever his name is. It's like NBA players' former poverty has been mythologized, turned into a necessary part of how high they'll one day rise. It's teleology, and Horatio Alger, and frankly kind of gross. At best, there's a disconnect between "kid plays on dirt and goes on to dominate American sports" and "ordinary schmo loses job during recession." The former is both fantastic and in our society, totally familiar; the latter is cast as the salt-of-the-earth feat of bravery. We're all ordinary people, unless we're too poor, then we might as well be rich because we'll end up cagers or rappers.
Fuck a photo, I have to go watch a movie about Chechnya. Will be live tonight.
Periodically, and without any fair warning, FreeDarko turns into a music blog. Like when the Recluse and myself joined hands in celebration of ancestral favorites Polvo. Or today, roughly 24 hours after I became the last person to stand before My Bloody Valentine's reunion tour. What follows is an exchange between myself and Zac Crain, senior editor at D Magazine and author of the forthcoming Dimebag Darrell bio, Black Tooth Grin
Bethlehem Shoals: You know how everyone talks about the new Terminator movie, or The Dark Knight, as a franchise "reboot?" That's what this show was like for me. And others, I think. One friend just said to me "I feel like the band is entirely different to me now." It's true—I tried to listen to Loveless afterward to figure out the setlist, and there was zero familiarity with the music on my part. And this is a record I've listened to thousands of times. I also believe, or want to believe, that the MBVocaust was especially deadly. The sound crew were going nuts, especially some bald guy who appeared to be in charge. They were all taping it, and these dudes had been on the road with them through the whole tour (last date was tonight). I won't go into any great detail over what parts of my body were affected and how, or how satisfying it was to watch "fans" around us who wouldn't shut up before leave after five minutes. Like motherfuckers, what did you think you were getting into? Don't you know shit about their live show?
Zac Crain: Someone offered me what he termed "the best mushrooms ever" pre-show, and I wisely declined. Because I think it might have ended up looking like the opening of the ark scene from Raiders. And I can't imagine playing that shit while intoxicated in any way. I also like the fact that, of a few thousand, maybe a handful of people had seen them before, and maybe one of those people saw them back in the day. So it was totally different than seeing, say, the Pixies, where everyone had a memory to stack it up against, or you really felt you were getting less than you might have back in the day. Totally fresh. I think reboot more or less nails it, because it was new. You weren't seeing the old band, or the the band on the record, but you weren't getting a rehash necessarily either.
BS: A friend of mine feels that Loveless once and for all destroyed the possibility of album-live performance correlation. I'd take it even further—that album's vastly human, but who ever thinks it was made by people with bodies? Even the erotics of them are soft-focus: sleeping, dreaming, bathing in sound without any punk-like penetration. Or emotions that go past the womb or certain altered states. It's like ghosts' wet dreams. Live, though, they're the polar opposite: Rock performance at its most raw and elemental. The ballad-ic songs barely existed in that context (at all, or when they were played). Then the onslaught at the end, which was like stripping their live ethos down to the bare essence. And look what you get. So basically, they're the end of rock on two different extremes of the spectrum.
ZC: I listened to Loveless the next day, and it's sort of like a tape loop of the echo of the show in my head as I was driving home, but not as pejorative as that probably sounds. But, yeah, it's not the same. It's like the difference between a jet stream and an actual jet. The MBVocaust, to me, is sort of the combine harvester of rock shows, separating the people who were there for the music and the people who were there just to be there. I was about maybe 30 feet back. People were streaming past me to leave, but just as many were streaming past me to get closer. I enjoyed that. I can't, even in my mind, completely recreate what it felt/sounded like, but I did notice when I was leaving that I felt it physically way more than anything I can remember.
BS: To me, it wasn't a question of there for the music vs. there for the event, but more "there to hear Loveless really fucking loud" vs. "people who have really spent time with this music."
ZC: Weird thing for me is I grew up in intensely small town Texas. So I had no idea about them until they were well and truly dead, or it seemed so. And then there was so much catching up to do with other stuff, I really didn't listen to MBV until really really late. And then that's all I listened to, for a time. So this wasn't really ancient to me. It was more like a band that hadn't toured in like, maybe, six or seven years. (I kind of did everything backwards or mixed up or something: hip-hop was my high school punk rock, then punk rock was my punk rock, then Britpop, then nothing but Stax/Volt, and somewhere in that game of Twister I spun "left hand, MBV.") So last Wednesday I expected to be monumental, then I was worried it wouldn't be, then it was way more than I thought it would be originally.
BS: One thing I thought halfway through is "wait, what exactly makes for an MBV 'fan'?" There's so little music. Like three CD-R's of rarities. And I don't think your experience with them (which sounds a lot like mine) is uncommon, or somehow lesser than . . . that one guy who saw them in 1991? If anything, there's a way in which you can listen to them as a totally dated band; getting into them later, when they've taken on legendary status, and realizing how easy/essential it is to do so, emphasizes just how colossal they are. Like, who says "you weren't listening to Coltrane in 1965!" God doesn't belong to anyone in particular, does he? Or some people more than others?
ZC: That's a good point. There's really not as much to grab onto, musically, as with other bands that have that stature, though I guess someone like the Stone Roses would have a similar situation should they ever get back together. It's funny looking back -- because that's mostly what I have to do with the bands I really like -- and they 1) weren't together as long as you think and 2) didn't record as much either. The deal with MBV is that part of what they did has been so bastardized -- by bands, and by critics describing those bands -- that until they started playing again, it was less a band than an idea, but an idea no one really remembered anymore, or remembered really imprecisely. Sort of like a scene from a movie you talk about with your friends all the time but never actually watch, and so, the dialogue gets botched, and then screwed up even more, and on and on. When you actually watch the movie, the scene is as great as you remembered, but not anything at all how you remembered it, if that makes any sense.
BS: I would almost say that the "I saw them in 1991" dudes become part of that hazy past. So someone says that to your face and they automatically start to dissipate a little. They become part of the legend: "those fans that heard the sound." Weird that the sheer physicality of their past live shows had become as elusive, as much of an idea, as "Loveless" was the day it was released. As opposed to, say, the time I went to Sonic Youth in 1996 and some middle-aged black dude with a Confusion is Sex tee tucked into acid-washed jeans just kept glaring at everyone.
ZC: Elusive is a good word because I can't remember the last time I went to a show where so many people didn't know exactly what to expect. At best you have someone who went to a show in another city, but they don't give you much. The sense beforehand was more than nervousness, less than fear. "Can I handle this?" was part of it, but more than that it was "How do I want to handle this? What are they/am I capable of?" Can't think of anyone else that can do that. There are bands that are sort of wildly different from record to stage and back, but even those bands, like I suppose people would consider Radiohead to be one, are wildly different in kind of predictable ways. I think MBV is permanently other. It's whatever you want it to be, but it is also none of those things exactly, and probably never will be.
BS: This goes back, as do all things in life, to the MBVocaust. If some noise band had just come out swinging with that, I would've left. But to have that as the culmination of a set that contained so many emotions, and contrasts, and history, made it well-earned. Wait, that's such a dispassionate way of looking at it. It was both laying all that to waste and boiling it down to its essence. Like the world ending so it could start over again. I really have no idea how something so stupid and obvious could be so profound. Actually, I do: If a band of unparalleled artistic excellence did it after a great set that came after almost twenty years of build-up. Catharsis shouldn't be complicated, just the circumstances surrounding it.
As a bonus, here's David Wingo's "Macrophenomenal Anthem," which only really began to take shape when MBV-mania swept New York last fall.
From the YouTube description: "Backstage at a Too Short show last year. Baron Davis (aka Flava Flav) claims that Stephen Jackson (aka Chuck D) is 'the sickest rapper' he knows. Baron lied. Stephen Jackson cannot rap." Whatever.
If you've been reading this site for a minute, or haven't but found yourself inexplicably drawn to it, you're probably familiar with this timeless clip:
Stage set. When I was on the road, I met this guy in New York who swore that he and his friend had kept this torch alive, recording their own awkward, lo-fi, partly freestyled, and did I mention, very white, homages to these perfect nine minutes of Ultramag weird/NBA classic synergy. He got in touch with me over the weekend and blessed me with mp3's of their efforts, as well as assurances that the 2009 edition is on its way. So without further anticipation, here's Doug S. and friend down through the years:
While you won't exactly hear the recent history of rap played out in these tracks, there is definite evolution as they, I don't know, figure out how to use a computer and control their voices. Even if you don't get all the way through all of them—and you should—at least respect the monk-ish devotion and triumph over god-given limitations. Not to proselytize, but this just might be the FD version of the inspired fan jingle.
P.S. New post later today or early tomorrow. Also, the FD Twitter is so on and poppin' that it warrants getting an account.
HOLY GRAIL ALERT
Video of the 1976 Spirits of St. Louis team, one of those ones that got away from my lifetime.
