Wow, I just heard one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard on the radio: Odetta singing "Home on the Range".

First interesting thing in Thucydides

400 pages in, and I finally got to the first piece of information I found genuinely interesting in Book Five, Section 71 of the Peloponnesian War:

"It is true of all armies that, when they are moving into action, the right wing tends to get unduly extended and each side overlaps the enemy’s left with its own right. This is because fear makes every man do his best to find protection for his unarmed side in the shield of the man next to him on the right, thinking that the more closely the shields are locked together, the safer he will be. The fault comes originally from the man on the extreme right of the front line, who is always trying to keep his unarmed side away from the enemy, and his fear spreads to the others who follow his example."

JC in Woodland

We were out walking Norm and I thought I saw Jimmy Claus drive by in a white pick-up truck with no muffler. Sure enough, when I got home my Phil Spector Christmas album was warped. Creep.

Happy Xmas. War is over (if you want it).

“It’s the sound of the days, falling down like rain on Christmas” was how I misheard the first line of a Stephin Merritt song, and it sounded like the dreariest thing in the world to me. But Juliana told me that as a child she always wanted rain on Christmas, and a brief survey of my California-born co-workers has led me to the conclusion that in California there are sunny Christmas people and rainy Christmas people. The pro-sunny arguments are: you can go outside, you can play with your new toys, if you are an adult you can get away from your family and some people just always like sunny days better. The pro-rainy arguments are: rain is more like snow, you can build a fire and watch movies, you can wear your new winter clothes outside and rain is just more Chrismas-y. It appears that this year the rainy Christmas people will have their way.

Cinema de Minuit

Am I the only one who puts on the French subtitles when watching old black-&-white movies in order to call up the gap-toothed, head-waggling spirit of Freddy Mitterand?

Santa Ana Winds

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge..."

--Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

Test

Tried to "publish" something to this Blog spot earlier today, but it didn't work -- lost somewhere in cyberspace. It'll turn up somewhere sometime perhaps. Or maybe not ... there was something heretical about it.
Anyway, I don't give up that easily and will try again with this little ditty that I wrote earlier this year and which is looking, itself, for a home.

Valerie Malaval
Never travels à cheval
Riding backwards on a mule
She recites the golden rule
Perched upon her trusty ass
She's the vicar's favorite lass

Spartan Bar

Next time you're at church

Here's a Christmasy quotation of seasonal relevance from Jakob Burkhardt (the man on the 50 Swiss franc note) from his "The Age of Constantine the Great":

And Eusebius, though all historians have followed him, has been proven guilty of so many distortions, dissimulations, and inventions that he has forfeited all claim to figure as a decisive source. It is a melancholy but very understandable fact that none of the other spokesmen of the Church, as far as we know, revealed Constantine's true position, that they uttered no word of displeasure against the murderous egoist who possessed the great merit of having conceived of Christianity as a world power and of having acted accordingly. We can easily imagine the joy of the Christians in having finally obtained a firm guarantee against persecution, but we are not obliged to share that elation after a millenium and a half.

My New Accordion

I bought an accordion. It's white with sparkly gold keys, not entirely unlike the old Spartans accordion. I gave that one away about ten years ago, when buttons were falling out and not all the keys worked but since playing in polka and klezmer bands I've been wanting a new one. I had wanted to get a little shrill-voiced one without too many buttons, like maybe a chromatic concertina (if they even make them) but I had borrowed this one from Maggie of Mad same, when Ned Stone came to visit in August and sort of got seduced into getting a bigger accordion than I'd intended. It has a sweet but mellow sound with nice bass notes, not small and shrill at all. I can play most of the Fast Fun duotonic book (though not "Sweet Lycette" yet--it's the jump to F# on "Don't know what the world's coming to" that's still too hard) and am trying to learn the Simple Songs I wrote on the ukulele.

Today is Jimmy's birthday, so here's a little poem for him:

Today is Jimmy's birthday
The party's in Mumbai
He is the sort of sterling friend
Who's very hard to come by.

Happy birthday Jymn. We created it, let's take it over.

The Big Box

Today I was listening to Rachel Maddow (a local Northampton girl) on Air America and I finally figured out why her theme music has always bugged me. She has a guitar and drums intro to her show that kind of rubs your ears the wrong way. And today I heard it - the drums have the same weird big box sound that mine have on New Fun Master. That damp, recorded in a cave, overdubbed, wet magazine smack that I thought was impossible to duplicate. Well someone must have heard it. And now it's out there - it's out in the world.

Thanksgiving

When we lived in Jackson and Juliana had first become a vegetarian we didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving and we weren't going to have turkey, so we came up with the idea of having Indian food for Thanksgiving: there are lots of different dishes, it takes more time than an everynight dinner and has lots of vegetarian possibilities. Since we moved to California we've been having Thanksgiving at Juliana's mom's house in Sonoma, but this year Juliana agreed to work at the UC Davis Veterinary Clinic on Thanksgiving Day, so once again we had Indian Thanksgiving. Here's what we had:

Curried pistachios and cashews as an amuse-guele
Carrot and cashew salad
Spinach and eggplant curry
Brussels sporouts with coconut
Spicy chick peas
Cranberry chutney
Cucumber in yougurt
Naan and papadam that I bought at a store and reheated
Cardamon and pistachio ice cream


Thanksgiving has also occasioned memory of the year, it might have been 1987, when Tracy was living with Charlotte in the building with the feral cats in the alley. I took the train down from Boston and arrived at about 1:00 in the morning Thanksgiving Day. Tracy met me at Penn Station, which is right across the street from Macy's, where they were clearing the streets. The next morning when I woke up Tracy was watching the parade on TV and she said, see, that's where we were yesterday. And there it was, on TV.

Robert Wyatt

I check the Robert Wyatt sections in record stores from time to time, because deep down I know there's some great secret stash of Robert Wyatt music that I haven't heard yet, and it turns out I'm right because last week I found an album called Theatre Royal Drury Lane Sunday 8th September 1974, put out by Hannibal. It's the one-off show of the Rock Bottom material with the usual Robert Wyatt players: Hugh Hopper, Fred Frith, Mike Oldfield, Nick Mason and even Ivor Cutler doing “For me is the life of the highwayman, yum yum". It sounds like Matching Mole or 801 doing that material, much more fusion than psychedelic. Of course I prefer the latter. I always heard the Zappa connection in early 70s Soft Machine, but was actually quite surprised, when I really listened to late-60s Miles Davis, at how much End of an Ear borrowed from that sound.

The live album includes to its detriment that unfortunate fusion staple, the Fender Rhodes with its horrid bell-like tones and also has too many funny-mouth-sounds for my taste. Mike Oldfield’s playing, however, is sort of a rediscovered treasure. But the main benefit of the album, I suspect, will be to send every Robert Wyatt-loving listener back to the inexhaustible Rock Bottom in search of an answer to that musical question, What's a baloley when it's a gafoley?

Appenzeller

I was surprised to see Appenzeller in the cheese section of my local grocery store. The cheese lady told me that they can’t seem to sell it in Woodland, though it does well in Davis and Vacaville. At $16.25 a pound, I can see why it would be a hard sell. I myself prefer Gruyere or Emmenthaler, which, by the way has been running advertisements with Susan Lucci promoting it as “Emmi”, a sound-alike for the television award which Ms. Lucci never wins.

Autmn reading

It's finally autumn here. Even my crazy upside-down tomato plants, which had leaves but no fruit in July, were producing on my birthday. The summer's so unpleasantly hot here--how unpleasantly hot is it?--that I have to wait till after dark to walk the dog, and there's only a couple of months on either side when it's pleasant and not raining and still light so that I can walk the dog after work. With Daylight Savings Time ended and the fog and rains begun, that season is officially over, so I've started my Serious Back-to-School reading: Thucydides. It was the first seminar reading I didn't finish and I figured it was time to catch up. I think I re-read Herodotus once, and found him as cheerfully digressive as I had the first time, but 28 years later, Thucydides is still kind of slow going. I wonder if Jimmy ever finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Word of the day

Juliana told me a word that one of the doctors in the hospital taught her: witzelsucht. I couldn't find it in my American Heritage Dictionary I won for being on It's Academic, but the two root words in German add up to "joke addict". According to Juliana it's someone who cracks himself up, but whom no one else finds funny.

Garbo stamp

37 cents of pleasure

Uncle Sarkissian

For those who don't get the College magazine, John Sarkissian died on July 11 of this year.

Many Happy Returns!

Happy Birthday Johny Blood -
I'm sorry I can't get the right day. I think it was actually yesterday, but tomorrow is election day, which is what I remember.
Perhaps you had some of that delicious Wisconsin dessert cheese for your birthday meal. If there were a fondue restaurant nearby, you might have eaten there, too.
Maybe you opened some presents.
And maybe you wondered if your friends forgot, but we didn't.

It's A Boy

Dennis, who played the Phil Manzanera role on When They Go To Sleep, and Chris, with whom I collaborated on a tuba-text-'n'-film performance piece and with whom I hope to again, had their baby yesterday: Miles Patrick Finnegan.

Pictures here.

Cheese, Gromit

Juliana's back from Wisconsin, and she brought me lots of cheese: cheddar with cranberries, jack with morels and leeks, 4-year aged cheddar, string cheese whips, frying cheese as well as Fennuusto, which is called Juustoleipa in Finland and is some sort of baked cheese product that is reheated and served with jam or maple syrup and dipped in coffee. She also brought me something in wax shaped and colored to look like a cow, which I haven't cut into yet, and chocolate cheese fudge, which I haven't dared try yet.

California has been marketing its cheese with the slogan “Great cheese comes from happy cows”, presumably because everyone, even cows, wants to live in California, and indeed some fantastic artisanal Old World-New World cheeses are made here. But fine as those cheese are, California can never even hope to be considered the Dairy State until they produce Juustoleipa.

Gauloises

Flossbonder told me he'd heard that Gauloise cigarettes were being discontinued, and I found confirmation from the IHT. Wonder if they still make Mary Longs?

Wild Turkeys

Three wild turkeys were in the parking lot at work and came right up to the window, maybe three feet from where I sit. That was strange. This is Sacramento, not Jackson Hole. Sorry I don't have a picture.

Two albums

Here are two lightweight, genre-bustin’ albums I've been enjoying this summer: The first is called "Tijuana Sessions Vol 3" by the Nortec Collective. I don't know about volumes one and two, but volume 3 is a dance club cut-up of Mexican music, thus the lame name: Nor(teno) plus tech(no). They use live accordion, tuba, bajo sexto and shrill overblown horns over the rather standard-sounding dance beats, and the overall effect is sort of a hopped-up beery haze. The words seem to have been translated from Spanish into Japanese and thence into English: "what I care about is to see you again and to dance that song".

The other album is called "Nouvelle Vague". It's based on the goof that "bossa nova" actually means "new wave"; thus it’s a bunch of 80s new wave songs done as bossas. The most successful are more what I'd call British synth-pop: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by New Order, "Just Can't Get Enough" by Depeche Mode and "I Melt With You" by whoever that was by; the sort of songs one would have heard on WFNX if one was living in Boston in the mid- to late-80s. Juliana was, and she's quite partial to the album.

Sorry I've let the Spartan Bar go dry, though one might recall this hapenned not infrequently at the Paca-Carrol Spartan Bar. I was down in San Jose for Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur and played a bunch of shows with the Mad Maggies, including one at the Placerville Pagan Festival. I made a fine dinner this weekend: squash soup, polenta with gorgonzola and a salad with the eight or so cherry tomatoes I was able to pull from the garden.

Flat Iron

I suppose everyone carries around misconceptions that go uncorrected for years. Ray, my roommate on Mission Hill, pronounced the French poet’s name as “Rim-bod”, probably thinking that those who pronounced it correctly were confusing him with the Sylvester Stallone character. Ned Stone, for another instance, persists—to this day, I saw him only last month—in pronouncing the word heinous as “heenous”. I myself was 30 or so when I finally learned the word that everyone pronounced “egree-juss” and the one I thought was pronounced e-greg-ious, the second syllable with two hard g’s, like the man’s name Greg, were in fact one and the same, meaning outrageous or flagrant.

Well it was only when I saw a little clip on Entertainment Tonight on how to achieve the look of stars at the Emmys—in this case, Halle Berry’s look—that I realized that a flat iron, used to straighten women’s hair, is an implement somewhat like a waffle iron or, more to the point, a curling iron. I had always thought that when women would iron their hair, they would lay their heads down on an ironing board and iron it straight. It’s a crazy image but that’s how I thought women straightened their hair. Silly moron.

Saving Cranes

Well Juliana left to go to Baraboo WI for a month to do an internship at the International Crane Foundation. I'm not exactly sure what she'll be doing but this is their website with lots of nice pictures of cranes.

Losing Nemo

Nemo died yesterday, suddenly and unexpectedly. Nemo, for those who don't remmeber, is our sweet, cuddly, quiet, yellow bird, Harpo to her brother's Groucho. She was a dear friend and we will miss her.

Hey it's Tracy's birthday today. I didn't really bring a present but how's this:

Today is Tracy's birthday
Her virtues are most manifold
She made a little movie
For the Museum of the Seminole

Well, Peter's better at this sort of thing than I am. Anyway happy birthday Tracette.

When The Man that the singer is waiting for finally shows, he's all dressed in black with a big straw hat. What kind of shoes is he wearing? Pierre shoes?

I was drinking my coffee Saturday and thinking about how much nicer coffee is from a coffee cup than from a mug, but the coffee cups we have (well, they're Juliana's of course) are not very capacious, they're like for a little coffee after dinner. Juliana said oh they have nice ones in the Williams-Sonoma catalogue, and I went to see if I could find them in the catalogue, and I couldn’t but I did remember that I have a gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma. My co-workers gave it to me when I left my job at CCAC and of course (once a Moron always a Moron) I lost it for several years and then found it again, so I said that's it we're going to Williams-Sonoma today.

First we went out to eat at a cafe in Davis Juliana likes called Delta of Venus--is it just me, or is eating out at the Delta of Venus a little racy for central California?-- then off to Sacramento, but the directions, this wasn't just Mapquest, this was actually on the Williams-Sonoma website, were absurdly, insultingly wrong. They took us to 9th and H, around the Capitol and there aren't any stores there, and very little activity at all Saturday early afternoon. A woman saw us looking confused and gave us somewhat better directions: we wanted to be out by Sac State, H turns into Fair Oaks at Howe Avenue and it's in a shopping center just a little past there. But it doesn't; H deadends at the river, at a very confusing five-way intersection, and it’s J that turns into Fair Oaks. We stopped and asked some people who were selling some sort of antiques out of a parking lot, but we did find Fair Oaks, and the shopping mall, and the Williams-Sonoma itself.

Surprisingly, they didn't have terribly many coffee cups; they had mugs and glass Irish coffee cups and two-handled bowls that were supposed to be for bouillon but look like cafe-au-lait bowls, and only three real coffee cups that were big enough to hold eight ounces of coffee, which is how much I make in the morning: two all-white ones and a white one with a blue rim. I liked the latter best so that's what I got, and we had enough credit left over on the gift certificate to get a box of Turkish delight and a bergamot-scented candle. There's a picture of it up top so you can see how nice it is. It's part of a set in the picture, but of course I only got the cup and saucer.

As soon as I got home I made another pot of coffee and discovered why mugs are shaped the way they are: with a mug you grasp the handle close to the cup, but with a coffee cup your hand is away from the cup, so it's more work for your wrist. Honestly, there's a difference. Pick up a mug and then a coffee cup and you'll see. I don't care. Coffee is still better out of a cup than out of a mug.

More about Cotati

An article in the SF Chronicle about the Cotati Accordion Festival.

About A Bird

“passer, deliciae meae puellae...” Catullus 3


One morning I was in the bathroom and I heard Juliana call my name, and then call again, and as I sort of hopped to the door she said, “Mr. Smee is dead”, and she was holding his dead body. Mr. Smee was a little gray bird, a cockatiel, whom we had recently taken in. We already had two cockatiels, Chaitzel and Nemo. Chaitzel, though a boy, was named after my great-aunt Chaitze, whose parents changed her name when she was deathly ill as a child so that the angel of death would pass her over. I'm not sure why Juliana gave him that name; I had suggested that of my other great-aunt, Beilah. Nemo, though a girl, got her name from her propensity for hanging upside down with her wings spread and the same sweet, slightly puzzled expression as the early cartoon character Little Nemo In Slumberland, fallen out of bed in his yellow pajamas. The Hanged Man in the tarot deck bears the same expression, as did Stephen Leach when I shot him in a dream.

Mr. Smee was brought to the veterinary clinic where Juliana works, and he had been beaten up pretty badly by some scrub jays. I don't know how Juliana knew then that it was scrub jays, but it was, as Mr. Smee had a high-pitched alarm cry he would give off whenever he heard the “screee screee” of scrub jays outside. You can't really blame him. His feathers were pretty messed up, and he had a scar over his eye. I thought maybe he needed an eye-patch, and then I thought, ooh ooh maybe he could get a little pirate to sit on his shoulder, so we named him Jack Sparrow, but then changed it to Mr. Smee which, though not as funny an image as a little bird pretending to be Johnny Depp in “The Pirates of the Caribbean” is more fun to say.

He was a bit withdrawn for quite a while, I wouldn't say sullen but a little mistrustful. You couldn't really blame him. Then one morning I thought I heard a wolf whistle coming from the birdcage, you know “wheet wheew”. Chaitzel can whistle the theme song to “The Simpsons” and loves to freestyle a mix of other songs I've taught him: “Blue Trane”, “Green Acres”, “The Baby Elephant Walk” and he does this thing that sounds like “My Analyst Told Me”, or whatever it's called, by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. But he has a warbly whistle, like mine, whereas the wolf whistle was quite sharp and piercing. I heard it again another day, and then I thought I heard, “Jingle Bells” and then one day I was in the room when he did it, the first line of “Jingle Bells”, and he sort of squinted at me, pirate-like: yeah I said it matey. Jingle all the way. Arrrgh.

Then one day Juliana opened a crinkly bag of tortilla chips, and clear as a bell, from the other room Mr. Smee gave his wolf whistle and it took us a moment to realize what had happened and we both burst out laughing: obviously this had once been someone's pet, someone who gave him chips when he wolf whistled. So we--what would anyone do? We went in and held a chip up to the cage, and he came running over and nibbled at it and we whistled at him but he didn't whistle back. Why should he? He already had his chip.

He became more comfortable, and some of his scruffy feathers grew out, though he still had the scar tissue over his eye, and he started singing the second half of “Jingle Bells”, the oh what fun it is to ride part. It's funny about cockatiels, they all pretty much look alike, well not Nemo because she's yellow, lutino it's called, but the gray ones, if you saw Chaitzel and Mr. Smee together you'd have trouble telling them apart, unless you knew to look for the scars around Smee's eyes but the way they stand is different, Chaitzel talky and cocky and Smee a scurvy pirate knave, and anyway one has my quavery whistle and the other a sharper, more piercing one.

Juliana said when she brought him home, oh three birds is the same as two but of course it's not. For one thing we ended up getting a larger cage, one too big and heavy to roll into the other room at night. Also we have, or had, a firm rule in this house: two birds, two fingers. That is to say if I stick my pinky in to give one of the birds a little scratch on the head I have to stick in the pinky of my other hand too. If I scratch Chaitzel first Nemo is quick to invoke this rule, and if I scratch Nemo first then Chaitzel will push her out of the way, and I'll have to stick my other finger in to keep the peace. He's not a very nice brother. Mr. Smee was not above accepting a little head scratch now and then, but it resulted in a complete violation of the two birds two fingers rule. Though I tried, I didn't have the dexterity to master a series of quick hand movements that would create the illusion of no bird being unattended.

Chaitzel did not teach Smee the theme to the Simpsons, nor did Smee teach Chaitzel “Jingle Bells”. He did however teach them to be afraid of scrub jays, and the two other birds would join in when he gave his little high-pitched jay alarm. Though the birds never cuddled up or did anything particularly photogenic, they did refrain from bird fights, which are illegal in the state of California anyway. Smee seemed happy enough in his new home, though I wouldn't call him cheery. I think he was just naturally of a saturnine nature.

And then one day he was at the bottom of the cage, of the new cage that was too big to roll from room to room. Juliana took him back to the veterinary clinic to have an examination on his corpse, a necropsy it's called for animals. Apparently it was his heart, not something that the other birds could catch nor, as I had just assumed, the result of something I did wrong. As I stood in my underwear, staring unbelieving at his little dead body, Juliana said sadly, And now he'll never get to sing “Jingle Bells” for Christmas. And so he didn't.

We’ve seen three movies on the big screen since moving to Woodland: “Winged Migration”, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” and “March of the Penguins”, which last we saw over the weekend. Anyone who can find the pattern in our movie-going wins a free drink from the Spartan Bar. As far as “The March of the Penguins”: go see it. What did you think I’d say.

The high temperature over the weekend was finally below 100, in fact it was below 90, so I was able to go for a nice long walk with the dog during daylight hours both days. We don’t either of us like going out when it’s too hot.

I finally have a few little tomatoes in my garden. The skins are a little thick but they’re tasty.

I’ll be playing at the Cotati Accordion Festival August 26 and 27. Every year since I’ve moved to California I say I’m going to go to Cotati and then I never do, but this year I’ll be playing, and the headliner is Flaco Jimenez. Yes, Flaco himself. The group I’m playing with has the unfortunate name of The Mad Maggies (better or worse a name than 7 or 8 Worm Hearts? Discuss) but they’re a lot of fun to play with.

This is the link to the Cotati Accordion Festival.

The Big Note Theory

I just learned (though the news is a couple of years old) that astronomers have found a black hole that emits sound, specifically a B-flat 53 octaves below middle C on the piano. By my calculations, that would be one beat about every 4,153,460 years. The biggest, deepest tuba in the known universe is pitched in B-flat, like any old band horn!


Click here for the NASA story

Wilco

What is it about a long drive that can completely change a relationship with a person – or an album? On a recent trip to and from West Virginia I listened to many CDs, but Wilco suddenly became the only music I really wanted to hear. I liked both Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born before, and thought that, between the two of them, you could make one really good album. But now it’s different. I returned on a Monday, and left A Ghost is Born in my CD player for a week and a half. I don’t know how many times I listened to it, just letting it play over and over. Today I put the new Brian Eno in, which I like very much. It also accompanied me on the same trip. But I think Wilco will probably replace it again in a couple of days.

Song for Frankie Yankovic

I wanted to write a tribute to Myron Floren, but Frankie Yankovic's name scanned ever so much better, so instead I have a tribute to Frank Yankovic (who passed away several years ago). Maybe Myron's song should be more like "The Ballad of Cable Hogue".


The Day Frankie Yankovic Died

The moon began to slide and slip
And wander like a drunken ship
Bent like a soggy potato chip
The day Frankie Yankovic died

And the world turned upside down
Fire spewing from the ground
Oceans creaking, turning ‘round
The day Frankie Yankovic died

Ghoulish creatures from the deep
That we’d all long thought asleep
Gnashed their teeth and tried to weep
The day Frankie Yankovic died

I got a message on my pager
Beamed to me from Ursa Major
“Help us help us we’re in danger”
The day Frankie Yankovic died

I dreamed I saw a bloody horse
Dragged away from me by force
I hung my head in deep remorse
The day Frankie Yankovic died

Let thunder sound and lightning flash!
Let boulders tremble, mountains crash!
Let the sky become an oozing gash
The day Frankie Yankovic died

Stephen called. He was in Arcata.

The passing of Myron Floren

Joe Strummer, Robert Quine,and now Myron Floren...

Click here for the Washington Post obituary

Tomatoes for dinner

Tomatoes are so plentiful here that our state capitol is known as Sack-o-tomatoes, or as I prefer to francophonically call it Sacre-Tomate, with an accent aigu over the first e that I don’t know how to do in this font. So plentiful that two different people have given me tomatoes from their garden, as they had a super-abundance, rather than the usual, only-slightly-welcome zucchini harvest. I’m not going to say they’re better than, say, Long Island or Maryland tomatoes, but I will say they’re the best I’ve ever had. Certainly--sorry Jim, but I don’t remember once having fresh tomatoes that were nearly so good in Switzerland. Maybe I just don’t remember. As for my own garden, well, I planted late and the dirt’s not very good, but anyway I’m fortunate that people have given me some, and you can get nice fresh juicy fat boys at the farmer’s market.

Last night I had about two pounds of Roma tomatoes and I put them in boiling water for just a minute or so, really just about sixty seconds, to loosen the skin. Then I cut them in half, slipped off the skins and scooped out the seeds and wet stuff, and chopped them up and put them in a pot with three or four cloves of pressed garlic, about half a stick of butter (but if that much dairy fat freaks you out you could use olive oil), salt and pepper and cooked it way down, then served it over gemelle, the twisted pasta that sort of looks like Sugar Smacks, with some parmesan and a little more black pepper. The only work is parboiling and seeding the tomatoes, and the fact that it’s like 90 degrees here and you have to leave it on the stove for an hour or so for it to cook down and that’s a hot kitchen. I don’t know, I made mojitos, as we do have plenty of mint in the garden, and anyway if Jim Preston were here he’d say it’s good to sweat.

Another Fast Fun Dream

7/27/05 Jimmy is visiting, and so is Johny. I’m not sure where we are. Jimmy is casually playing an acoustic guitar. Johny leaves for a moment. I ask Jimmy if he brought his electric guitar. I’m thinking he might have a little amp with him, too. But, he says he didn’t bring it. Johny comes back and says he wishes we could get high. I have some pot, but Jimmy has some right there. We smoke out of a little pipe, kind of like mine. I think about how I’ve been saying that I really need to smoke pot all the time again. It seems like it might help my mood. I say that I’ve been wanting to get a bong, but there are no head shops in Northampton. I guess I’ll have to look online. I’m trying to light the pipe, but I’m having trouble with my bad thumb, I switch to my left hand, but still can’t light the lighter. Then, when I stop trying, it lights itself, I light the pipe, wondering how I will put the lighter out since I’m not holding the thing down.

I used the word "parapraxis" at work. That was fun.

No New Jersey

My brother's been feeling poorly, and I had thought I might go out to New Jersey and drop him some of my stem cells in the next few weeks. I was hoping to perk up my brother and piss off Bill Frist at the same time. It turns out the famous Blood blood isn't a close enough match, so the mission got cancelled. I hope to be going out that way in late winter/early spring, though, to work on the Peter Gilbert solo project.

Boogie

I've been listening to Swinging Hollywood Hillbilly Cowboys, a 4-CD collection of West Coast country swing and blues from the 40s and 50s, released by the estimable Brittish label Proper, a bargain at $25. I have learned that my taste for songs with the word "Boogie" in the title is in fact limited, even songs that feature a pedal steel solo. Such as: Talkin' Boogie, Git Fiddle Boogie, Ranger Boogie, Truck Driver's Boogie, Rogue River Boogie, Boogie Woogie Fever, Boogie Woogie Boy, Bottle Baby Boogie, Hoot Owl Boogie, Jump Rope Boogie and not one but two versions of the Juke Box Boogie.

Bob Firestone, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone. Mister Bob Firestone...

I talked with Peter over the weekend. He’s arrived safely at his campgrounds in Cutchogue Long Island and will check in to the Bar as soon as he has internet access. However I haven’t heard anything yet from James L. “Flamer J” Preston. I sent him an invitation and a note to the address at apti.com, the only one I have for him. If someone has better information, please let me know. While we’re waiting, here’s a picture from Flo Roessler to remind us of our Dear Papa, and his chest like a tavern.

The Jimi Hendrix of the tuba

“I remember that during the sessions for this project, the engineer kept trying to change my tuba sound. He didn’t want all my distortion because he didn’t want people to think he was a bad engineer. But it was supposed to represent Jimi’s guitar, loud and blaring, because none of our guitar players could do it; they were too hip and jazzy…”

-- Howard Johnson, on playing the tuba solo for “Voodoo Chile” on 1974’s “The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix


The solo’s actually not that great, but I like the story.

On Some Dead Boys (and Some Living Ones)

I set up a website a long time ago where I was trying to post a 1000-word essay per month. I sort of let it go but over the weekend I went back and finished a piece I started a few months ago. (The reference to Hunter Thompson's death should clue you in that it's a little stale.) This is the website:

http://hometown.aol.com/johnyblood/myhomepage/index.html

and this is the essay:


On Some Dead Boys (and Some Living Ones)

When I lived in Boston, a long time ago, when I lived with Jimmy and Tracy we went to a Korean restaurant on Mass Ave near Huntington called I think Arirang. The meal was very good, I'd never had Korean food before and I quite liked it, and the restaurant was very pretty inside and the waitress was nice to us. Jimmy asked her what the name of the restaurant meant. I may have misunderstood at the time, or misremember now, but it seems that Arirang is a song you sing to someone who is going away and you know you'll never see them again. I may have it wrong, but anyway whether that's what's it's called or not it makes me think of “Caroline, No”, the closing track on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album. The piece ends with the sound of a train roaring by, and with singer Brian Wilson we say goodbye: Goodbye, Pet Sounds. Goodbye, Caroline. Goodbye honesty and innocence and sanity, goodbye. You said you'd never change, but that's not true. So long clangclangclang and then a dog barking, woof woof, and then the dragging sound of the needle in the outgroove, if you're listening to the record, or nothing at all if you're not. Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys intended to follow that up with what was to be American Sergeant Pepper, but instead he cracked up and never completed it, though many of the songs were released on Beach Boys albums throughout the late 60s. The train kept rolling, goodbye everybody, until finally, last year in the 2004th year of the Common Era, Brian Wilson returned to his (artistic) hometown and remade the album he was unable to complete in 1967, called as originally intended SMILE. It's a work as sweet and sad and pulled from despair and defeat as Rock Bottom, the incredibly beautiful album Robert Wyatt recorded in 1973 shortly after he was released from the hospital as a paraplegic.

The album has been much lauded critically, hearkening back to the “good” 60’s as much as Hunter Thompson's suicide this year might recall the “bad” 60’s. But if SMILE is a triumph over time, it's a defeat as well, because while Brian Wilson's voice is sweet, the harmonies lack two things: the voice of Dennis Wilson and that of Carl Wilson. Brian's two brothers died in the meantime and we the listeners suffer for the loss. Like the Everlys or the Carter family, the Wilson brothers were able to blend their voices in a distinctively sweet way, perhaps because their throats are made of the same stuff or perhaps simply because they sang together since they were children. Though SMILE is beautiful and structurally more interesting than any Beach Boys album since Pet Sounds, the individual songs (“Good Vibrations”, “Heroes and Villains”, even “Vege-tables”) fall short of their 60s versions. The triumph, of course, is in the trying.

An equally if more obscure instance of middle-aged men revisiting their past is Rocket From the Tombs’ 2004 release, Rocket Redux. (The album art is even lamer than the title.) Rocket From the Tombs was an utter obscurity from Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-70s, who weren't together long enough in their heyday to have released an album. Two very slightly well-known bands were formed by the members afterwards: the punk rock band the Dead Boys and the “avant-garage” (their term), patephysical, industrial-surrealist band Pere Ubu. The high-pitched caterwauling and yelps of Ubu and RFTT singer David Thomas (not the Wendy's guy; he's from Columbus) made "Psycho Killer"-era David Byrne sound like Perry Como. I saw the Dead Boys at Bogart's in Cincinnati in the summer of 1978, the day Dennis Kucinich resigned as mayor of their hometown of Cleveland, if I'm not mistaken. Seeing their singer, Stiv Bators (who as it happens was not a member of Rocket From the Tombs) I thought, gosh, this guy is a Catholic schoolboy who likes Iggy even more than I do. Hearing Pere Ubu's first album, just after spring break 1978 in James and Stephen's room made me think, aha. We are not alone. They were the first band considered punk that reminded me of the music my friends and I were playing, as psychedelic as if Man Ray had used the guitar the way he used a camera.

Some of the Rocket from the Tombs songbook I know from Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys, and the ones I hadn't heard before are in the same vein: aggression, alienation and depravity mixed with oddball literary and old movie images. The ghost on this album is guitar player Peter Laughner. Laughner was particularly adept at writing songs using a punk-minimalist scarcity of materials: "Amphetamine” has a two-chord structure, and in "Ain't It Fun" and "Life Stinks" the lines all end in words rhyming with "fun" and "stink" respectively. He died in 1977, before his bands had even released an album. I'm not entirely clear on whether it was suicide, an OD or medical complications brought about by a short lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse, but critic Lester Bang, who knew him, said he died of wanting to be Lou Reed, though this can't be considered Lou's fault.

The new album is premised on the absurdity of men in their 50s singing about self-hatred, suicide, drug abuse and other teen-aged topics. Yet when David Thomas sings, “My mom threw me out till I find some pants that fit” he doesn't sound like he's winking, or like he's singing an oldie; he sounds like a middle-aged man whose mom kicked him out for ill-fitting trousers. His interpretation of "Sonic Reducer" tops the only other version I know, the Dead Boys’ of 1977 from their album Young Loud & Snotty. The vantage point is quintessentially adolescent: I'm in my room looking out at people who ignore me, but I'm not just anyone. One day I'll be 10 feet tall, I'll be like a pharaoh, I'll show everyone. The exact nature of the revenge seems clearer to the singer than to the listener. It involves some kind of machine (I hear it as a “bubble machine”, though that seems a little preposterous even for David Thomas), a ‘lectronic dream, a sonic reducer. Stiv Bators sang it as a ball of raw, infantile fury. But what does it mean for a man in his 50s to be saying that?

Hunter Thompson recently showed us that suicide is an option for a man in his 60s as much as for a young man. Hemingway at 62 and Kurt Cobain at 27 both took the same macho, brutal, definitive way out. Alienation, frustration and fear of drying up creatively or selling out can apparently be a part of anyone's life at any time. Perhaps Rocket from the Tombs 1974 was merely being punkishly fashionable; perhaps they were no more serious than the Ramones singing about sniffing glue, cretinism and attacking children with baseball bats. Or perhaps they were really talking about their own lives, and perhaps Rocket from the Tombs 2004 still is, using the work of their youth as a way of speaking about the present. The Polish author Witold Gombrowicz's first book was called Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity, and both SMILE and Rocket Redux could carry this title. Though it's interesting in a sort of Entertainment Tonight way that they were able to go back and re-create albums that were never made, what makes both of them moving is their incompleteness, the gaps, the distance between past and present. Dead brothers and band mates, commercial and artistic disappointment and the hope for a better time that went away with Caroline on that train. The absence turns out to be the star of the show. Or, let me give the final words to the Rocket from the Tombs: "I want to know/ I want to know/ What?"

A Fast Fun Dream

(The situations in this dream do not necessarily reflect the conscious opinions of the dreamer. All characters are elements of the dreamers psyche, and any resemblence to anyone we all know is purely coincidental.)

7/4/05 I am playing a reunion show with Fast Fun. A fairly large crowd has gathered before the show, although the club is set up so that the stage and the crowd are in several separate rooms on different floors, which makes it hard to see the audience at all. Getting ready, I feel good about the show, but when we're about to go on stage things immediately become very disorganized. Johny comes in with a new song, adding it to the set at the last minute. And getting on stage takes an interminably long time, it seems like we’ll never get started. The crowd becomes restless, I’m afraid that many of them are leaving, even though they wanted to see us. I’m tuning my ukelele, James is wandering on and off stage. Everytime I think we’re all together, someone else is missing.

At last we begin, but not with a song, but a feeble, disconnected jam. Peter leads on the guitar and sings some listless wail. The crowd mills, circling toward the door. I manage some intense feedback with the uke, but it is not enough to bring life to the sound.

Eventually we stop and resume the disorganized fiddling with strings and stands and set order. Someone in the crowd says they can’t see why we were supposed to be so good. I get frustrated and start saying things like “ let’s go, let’s play,” and “when are we going to start?” every couple of minutes. Peter gets mad, saying something about how I don’t understand “true art” and “real creativity.” James backs me up saying we do need to play at some point. I storm off saying, “I’ll see you in another 30 years.”

Johny Blood Tells A Joke

There’s a little cafeteria at work and though I don’t eat there often I did the other day. The woman in front of me, Doreen from Human Resources, ordered a hot dog with everything on it--onions? pickles? --The works! (though since they have neither kraut nor smothered onions nor even Dijon mustard, I don’t know if it could really be called the works). I could feel it welling up in me, I knew she wouldn’t think it was funny, but it’s just this corny tuba player streak, finally I fought it down and resisted, but it’s like feeling a sneeze coming on, like having to pee, like a song stuck in your head--bright are the stars that shine/dark is the sky/I know this love of mine/ blee blee blah blah/ bla-bla blee-blee, like having a smart riposte a day too late (Yr mama didn’t seem to have any trouble with back-end processing). I managed not to say it but it’s burning me up inside. Sorry, I know it’s stupid but did you hear about the Zen hot dog vendor? He’ll make you one with everything. That’s right. Ha-ha. Thanks, I feel better now. Yeah. One with everything. Good one.

I got the new Eno and it’s great, I’ve been listening to a lot, but there seems to be something pathetic and middle-aged about taking so much pleasure in an album that sounds like the most exciting music of 30 years ago, like going to a restaurant and ordering macaroni and cheese. Still I have been listening to it a lot.

I also got "Vintage Violence" on vinyl, filling a 20-year lacuna in my record collection. "Someone took the tuba for a pony ride and the music sounded so much better"--how true these words are. I’m surprised that the Nick Drake-revival crowd hasn’t brought this album back big time, along with "Paris 1919".

But back with a vengeance is Gang of Four, whose "I Found That Essence Rare" was the Paca-Carroll Basement Hit of 1980. Yup, apparently they’re doing a reunion tour, and all the hip new bands site them as an influence. Fine by me, but why them and not say, Marie & the Garcons or the Aural Exciters? And whatever happened to Jimmy Skafish?

Johny Blood Sings the Blues

Hello. I’m Johny Blood. And now I’d like to play you a song I stole from the Carter Family. It’s a blues in A. OK, here’s a couple of bars for nothing...

I went down to the river, the river deep and wide
Went down to the river, the river deep and wide
Saw a shining city on the other side.

I couldn’t get across, ‘cause the river was too deep
I couldn’t get across, ‘cause the river was too deep
Lay my head on a stone and went to sleep.

When I awoke, I lay on a desert shore
When I awoke, I lay on a desert shore
Couldn’t see that shining city no more.

Around my leg was twenty-seven chains
Around my leg was twenty-seven chains
And every one had the initials of my name.

I saw the judge, and asked him set me free
I saw the judge, and begged him set me free
Whatever’s been done, it surely wasn’t me.

The judge said nothing, pointed far away
The judge said nothing, pointed far away
I knew I’d never see the light of day.

Just then I heard the roaring of a train
Just then I heard the roaring of a train
Lost everyone I love and I’m stuck here in chains.

Where's the Old Stag?

Warning...warning sign...