No Way Out

Not that I'm looking for one.  Just taking it slow.

Some nights you go out to a show, or another, or another, or maybe you catch J.D. McPherson at Music Hall of Williamsburg after a birthday dinner for a friend.  

Those are usually pretty good nights.

Went to bed after that show feeling great - McPherson & Co. were amazing - but I woke up with a sore throat and no energy and I've been trying to rally back ever since.

So... some nights you just stay in trying to shake a cold, reading, listening to Chocolate Watch Band, watching a documentary about Geraldine Ferraro, and trying to figure out what to order in for dinner.  

And sometimes you might feel like you do need a way out, when things are so unbelievably backward in Wisconsin and Alabama that it gets confusing which state is which.  But you stay with it, you celebrate Women's History Month with Beth Henley and Wendy Wasserstein and Geraldine Ferraro, and you know the only way out is through.

Nimoy

What can you say? By all accounts a kind and generous person, thoughtful, caring, devoted to the arts and helping humanity and the environment, with a great sense of humor, he created one of the most iconic characters of the 20th Century (and beyond).  He'll be missed by entire generations of fans and fellow travelers.

Saturday Snow

The Sounds of Saturday

Not unpredictable to spend a cold-but-not-quite-as-COLD-as-it-has-been Saturday mostly indoors.

What it sounds like is: opera on the radio + the "let-me-out-of-here" hiss and gurgle of the steam from the last few drops of coffee in the thermos + the "what-the-shit-is-going-on?" rattle clank and hiss of the radiator racketing valiantly against the weather.

Snow just starting to fall.  Again.  Cory taking a nap trying to shake the head-throat-and-chest cold that came along with the stupid-cold temperatures.  I've been going back and forth between the paper, magazines, a book, and the multitude of screens.

Squeezing shows in wherever we can.  Did a BMI reading on Wednesday.  Last night was a Bud Light- (for the performers) and Murphy's- (for me) -soaked Hank V, with nary a Hank Cinq joke to be heard, as part of Sherin & JP's going away extravaganza in honor of their imminent West Coast relocation. Tonight is the Gob Squad at Skirball.  Tomorrow Cory presumably will rally for a seminar she needs to attend; I may hit a matinee, and then the Oscars tomorrow night.

Anecdote from this morning:

Cory asked about the music I'd put on.

Oh, it's a compilation Fast Folk put out in the late 80s.

"Have you played this before?"

No, I just found it a little while ago.  Frank used to read & listen to the Fast Folk stuff a lot - I just found all these streaming versions of their releases. I was looking for a dulcimer player we used to listen to.

"Of course you were."

Photo K. Devine for SpeakEasy Musicians' Cooperative

Hold Steady

Homecoming show at Music Hall of Williamsburg last week.

 

 

LOUD show (ears took a couple days to recover), tons of energy, amazing material. Lots of bro energy, and the rowdiest pit I've seen at a straight up rock show in a long time, but such a good show!  You cannot go wrong stuck between stations with these guys. Opener So So Glos even louder than the Minneapolis-by-way-of-Brooklyn main event.  

Still bummed that I missed the Replacements show this summer where The Hold Steady opened (but at least I missed it for the exceptionally good reason that I had a show of my own). The Music Hall show was a good way to remind us to keep on rockin' in the New Year.

When You Spend New Year's Eve in the Company of Children

You might end up with a sparkly tattoo on your forearm.

Not that that's a bad thing.

Rock and Roll Week

Not my normal speed, but we caught 4 nights of live music shows last week. Which adds up to awesome.

Night 1

Yo La Tengo 30th Anniversary show at Town Hall.  Antietam opened.  Here they are joined by many of the people they've worked and played with over the years.  Superfab.

Night 2

Second night of Yo La Tengo's anniversary residency.  Here are the Feelies in their opening set.  They all joined YLT as well at various times throughout the evening.  Megafab.

Oh, and these nights gave Cory a good chance to expand her collection of Yo La Tengo and Feelies setlists.  They're filling up the better part of the hearth at this point...

Night 3

Lucius, doing their New York homecoming at Terminal 5.  Not my favorite venue, but one of my current favorite acts.  They came out into the crowd for the encore, as is their wont.

Night 4

Beep opened the show at Music Hall of Williamsburg - they were great, but I didn't get any photos

Cibo Matto - Amazing.

Tune-Yards - Incredible.

So - now we're kind of in recovery mode.  Kind of.  I had a shoot on Sunday (tucked in between Lucius and Tune-Yards, if you're keeping score) and of course we've both been working regular hours this whole while.  Plans every night this week (but mainly mellower plans - that's what makes it recovery mode, I guess) and both days this weekend too.  

Like the man said, you'll sleep when you're dead.

Thankful

I am thankful for a lot (overwhelming evidence from all quarters to the contrary).  So, while we can't and shouldn't ignore the reality (as opposed to the cartoon pageant version) of the Pilgrims or the rest of the European occupation of this continent and the one to the south, we can still make use of a national opportunity to express gratitude.

Small dinner, as Thanksgivings go, with Bruce and Caroline from the building, and Caroline's brother and his girlfriend.  Lentil soup, mussels, turkey roulade, roasted root veggies, mashed potatoes, green beans, brussels sprouts, sweet potato pie & pine nut tart for dessert.  We shared the cooking tasks, and it turns out that the brother is a wine distributor, so there was a bunch of that flowing.  Much to be thankful for.

Put together a thanks-themed disc for the hosts.  Didn't think they'd cue it up for the event, but toward the end of the night they did play it. If you want to play along at home, this year's offering worked out to be:

Vince Guaraldi - Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Theme
Nancy Marano - Thanks A Million
The Silos - A Few Hundred Thank You's
Led Zeppelin - Thank You
M.T. Thomas/CSO - Thanksgiving and Forefather's Day movement from Charles Ives' Holidays Symphony
The Beatles - Thank You Girl
Sinéad O'Connor - Thank You for Hearing Me
Johnny Cash - Thanks A Lot
The Books - Thankyoubranch
Alan Titus/Norman Scribner Choir - Gloria/Trope: "Thank You" from Bernstein's Mass
Talking Heads - Thank You for Sending Me An Angel
Big Star - Thank You Friends
Bonnie Raitt - Thank You
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
My Morning Jacket - Thank You Too!

Selfie

Uncopyrightable Macaque selfie, or, me on a Monday like this...

The link takes you to an article (one of many) about the intellectual property legal questions surrounding photos taken by animals (non-human animals, I mean) no matter how human-trained.  I do feel bad for David Slater, who is losing out on the money from these images, but have hopes he'll strike gold on another project.  Meanwhile, come on - those photos!!!!

Watching from the Canal

From every which way.

Rock Rainbow

Westminster Thistle

From the garden where the monks used to grow the veg.

This Is Not Disturbing the Peace

This is paint. Over a parking lot in Shoreditch.

The Best in Community Gardening

From the banks of the Regents Canal

money never changed a thing

We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex
It didn't amount to anything more than the broken glass reflects

When you bite off more than you can chew you pay the penalty
Somebody's got to tell the tale, I guess it must be up to me

Happy Monday

Women to women

That night, we went to see the Sa Dance Company perform.  The house was full and performance was full to bursting with life – streaks of color and movement that simultaneously pulse with celestial abandon and the down-to-the-finger precision of Indian dance.  So who am I to talk about Indian dance tradition? Nobody.  But it was fab to see this group of mostly amateur but highly trained and experienced women cover ground from strict classicism to Bollywood exuberance.

Then on Sunday we went to the Kara Walker “A Subtlety” exhibition at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg. As much great stuff as we'd read about this, it was more amazing than we’d dared expect.

The full title was: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant."

Sugar baby, tar baby, Sugar Mammie Sphinx - sugar and molasses sculptures standing, melting, decaying and laying in wait, accusing and celebrating and remembering the people who worked, lived, and died in the sugar harvesting & refining industries. 

A history that stretches from the triangle of trade in slave, cash, and cane cargo from Europe to Africa to the Americas and back finds one end in this defunct Domino plant in Williamsburg, up and running until less than a decade ago.

There's so much written out there that I feel I can't add a lot to the conversation, especially since it's scarcely my story to tell.

There was a performance artist there, in green and black tiger print spandex, with a 'hidden' videographer (I didn't see him until later) getting footage of people's reactions to her as she walked the space.

At one point after she'd been there I don't know how long she let out a piercing scream standing in front of the sphinx who dominated the space (and most of the coverage of the exhibition).

She had a partner (also in spandex, black and yellow I think), who gave a simultaneous scream - no words, just an outcry - from the other end of the sphinx sculpture.

I don't know who they are or anything about them.  It wasn't this guy, who seems to have done something along similar lines, but including verbal statement and follow-up. But they were there. They were there on that day, as this art work was there, as generations of factory work happened there, and the work that built this place - this culture, this nation, this economy - happened, in the physical universe, for better and/or for worse, for a few hundred years.

Quick! Look over there!

Aaaand the upload of that last post didn't work and now it's more than a week later.  Ugh.  Here, look at these photos of a pie and a pup and think of something nice:

 

While we're at it - the dog in that photo is in need of some serious mojo on the health front.  Cast any healing spells you know; send out any vibes, prayers, or simple good wishes, because he's the best and we want him to stick around a good long time, dammit!

Notes from a Saturday Morning

Some quick thoughts while David Rothenberg finishes up this week's radio offering.

As usual, there has been lots of music/film/theater-going.  The Mike Daisey Yes This Man show at Joe's Pub was a standout, as was Casa Valentina.  Daisey has been at the center of quite a little storm on ye olde internets, stemming from the fact that his original title for this piece co-opted the #yesallwomen hashtag (which itself of course was a response to the misguided, not to say asinine, #notallmen hashtag that sprung up as a defensive backlash to the anger stemming from the Santa Barbara murders)  Some of the fiercest opinions came from people who seem [in my opinion] to have been blinded by the old Apple flap [missing the point and, at this point, boring] and/or driven to distraction by the notion of a white man weighing in on Women's Issues [completely understandable, necessary, and to a great extent the point of the show - and this is where it gets interesting: where does he get off doing this? Can anyone speaking from a place of privilege have something valid to contribute to the discussion? Where are the female, trans, queer, not-white-male monologists and performance artists taking on this topic at Joe's Pub? Or anywhere that gathers the kind of media attention that 1) goes along with the Public Theater or similar venues; or 2) seems to pop up when a famous, or semi-famous, man has something to say. Is he just a self-absorbed performer who needs to be loved?] Yes, I get the irony that I am a white dude making this commentary.  My opinions on this topic are extremely humble.  

And, it seems that some people are developing some strong opinions without actually seeing or hearing the work, which in my view is riveting, multi-faceted, and significantly more nuanced than some of the critical reaction would suggest. If you want to go to the crux of it, audio downloads of this and a whole bunch of Daisey's other work is free for the asking.  

Another worthwhile link is this old interview with the late, great Eli Wallach, departed a few days ago, who was a hero on a bunch of levels, and not just because he took time out of the goodness of his heart to talk to a friend of mine who was doing a Tennessee Williams role in Boston that Wallach had originated in New York about 50 years earlier.

Much happening these days.  Houseguest next weekend.  More to come...

Not Bad for a Sunday Night

Sylvan Esso and Tune-Yards at Webster Hall.

No justice being done here to Sylvan Esso - too far away and WAY too dark (I hear they fixed the lighting for the second night), but you can almost get a sense of Amelia's platform high tops and her moves.  Be assured: Amelia and Nick brought it.  Brought. It.

  

Tune-Yards with special guests Roomful of Teeth.  There was much rejoicing in the land.