Asshole of the Century

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

New York Rock 'n Roll Holiday

One day last summer, while I was wandering around the music stores near Clark and Broadway in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, a couple of old friends from my college radio days and I were discussing the difficulty of negotiating vacations with our wives.
My friend Dan volunteered,”You know, Carol just doesn’t understand that all I want to do when I’m in another town is wander through the bookstores and the music shops for a few hours and then get a beef sandwich.”
It’s a complaint that I’ve heard many times, with a personal twist here or there, from most of my married friends.
Music, books, and beer: those are the big three for me. Keep me involved with at least one of the above, and chances are that I’ll be having a good time. So when our friend Anne invited us on a tour of Midwest baseball stadiums a few years ago, that was a fine plan, because I could drink beer at Tigers Stadium during the day and then take Anne and my wife Melissa out to music clubs at night.
My wife’s notion of a vacation is more varied than mine, but it tends to center around food. I like food too, of course, but I enjoy it a lot less when I know it’s going to skin me 20-some dollars a plate. About the only meal that I feel about good paying more than $20 for is a good steak. And while I don’t really want to eat any more than the standard dollop of food that they tend to serve at these upscale, French- or Mediterranean-themed restaurants, I can’t get the Middle American idea out of my head that I’m not getting my money’s worth. But ply me with enough overpriced wine and I’ll forget about it for awhile, at least when I’m on vacation.
Another landmine that I try to limit, if not avoid all together, are the vacation activities that remind me of the field trips that my parents dragged us through each summer like a rite of passage: the museum tours, the monument gazing, and the gawking at natural phenomena that I still feel compelled to do from time to time, if for no other reason than to justify all the energy and expense it took to get there. While it beats shopping, I think of these tourist tours as more duty than a pleasure, as something I do to placate that moralizing nag inside my head, when I would be much happier just spending the day on a sunny beach or in a dark bar.
My wife Melissa and I were in New York City earlier this month to visit our friend Becky, and I had a perfect holiday, one that exceeded my expectations. It almost goes without saying that music provided an unexpected cornerstone of the trip.
Sure, we ate our share of overpriced food, including the dreaded New York City brunch, the kind where they feel compelled to fuck with my pancakes by putting crap like lemon and poppy seeds inside them, but I’ll have to say that the food was almost universally good, even the designer brunch. More importantly, I had a few of those magic musical moments upon which you hope to stumble but can never depend, music being a fickle love, like pretty art school girls or the Northern Lights.
That first afternoon in Manhattan, the three of us (Melissa, Becky, and I) ate fancy pastries in Central Park while looking down at on a small lake full of toy sailboats. I was perfectly happy to just lay there, drifting off, but Melissa would periodically be bothered to distraction by one of the ambient sounds, bolting up to blurt out “Will that saxophonist quit playing ‘Caravan?’”, or “I keep hearing a violin and some strange singing.”
A little while later, as we were walking towards Sheep Meadow, we realized that Melissa was not entirely delusional, and that the violin and singing she kept talking about were coming from Thoth. On a set of stairs leading below a large decorative arch were written a set of abstract symbols in colored chalk, looking like the kind of scratchings one might make before offering up some chicken’s blood to the gods. Under the bridge stood a man in a loincloth and high heels, chains strapped around his torso, his hair pulled back in a ponytail of dreadlocks, his eyes made into Egyptian horus with black liner, a large feather sticking up out of his headband, a man of indeterminant age and race, but who I guessed to be in his late 40’s. A man who went by the name of Thoth.
Thoth began his performance (which I later learned he called “prayformances”) by shaking his anklets, which formed percussion instruments, to a tribal beat, and then he began some energetic sawing on his violin, which, while somewhat directionless, was surprisingly tuneful. Occasionally, Thoth would break into song, in which his indecipherable falsetto would sporadically be broken up with the staccato ramblings of what sounded like a lunatic alter ego.
After the prayformance, I went down to check out Thoth’s CDs, which he had on display. I bought one, and he signed it for Melissa. Thoth and I started talking about the invented language that he sung in. He showed me his handmade flashcards which had over 500 characters, each of which had its own definition. He began to read some of the chicken scratches on the sidewalk: “For instance, this says Aug Menaldun”, pointing from right to left.
“I notice your language is read from right to left,” I observed.
Thoth looked back at the ground, seemingly confused for a bit, smiled, and then replied, “Well, today it is”.
Melissa, Becky and I started talking to him about Sigur Ros, who have their own invented language of Hopelandish, and I got to thinking about how both of these invented languages are more gimmick and performance technique than they are something meaningful in their own right, that both Thoth and Jonsi are using the facades of their invented languages to create the illusion of meaning, which frees their vocal stylings from the necessity of being literal, as their invented words mean whatever the respective performers they say they mean. This is sort of the inverse of James Joyce’s language in “Finnegan’s Wake”, which showed off the many ways in which Joyce could manipulate language and meaning to do his bidding, whereas Jonsi and Thoth have invented languages because they can’t find a way to shape real words into what they want to say. In essence, Joyce’s language represents the triumph of the rational linguist, while Jonsi and Thoth represent the resurgent Dionysian impulse(and in such a scenario I’ll side with the Dionysian dudes rather than the showoff.)
Since seeing him perform at the Trefoil Arch in Central Park, I’ve had a chance to check out Thoth’s website. Thoth’s expansive 3-volume work, of which I bought Vol. 1, is titled “The Herma”. It tells the tale of the imaginary world of Festad and its hermaphrodite hero/ine.
In the real world, Thoth seems to be vexed at many turns by American corporate culture, by pollen, and by the cops. He accuses advertisers of being “adjuncts of egotism” and imagines a world where products will be presented “humbly, gently” rather than aggressively marketed, thus allowing spirits like himself to thrive.
I like Thoth, and I am glad that, bare pimply ass and all, he could welcome me to New York.
That night, we took the bus down to the Lower East Side to get dinner at Becky’s favorite pizza place. From there we wandered the streets, looking for a music club, eventually settling on the Lakeside Lounge, a little hole-in-the-wall with no cover charge that might be able to pack 50 people in its small performance space and another 50 or so around the bar. That Thursday night, it was maybe half crowded. We caught the last part of a set by Spike Priggen, who has a semi-regular slot at the Lakeside.
We walked in to the sounds of some pleasant power pop, a style that I have had a soft spot for ever since my days as a teenager back in L.A. circa 1980, when I was one of the few beach punk kids who openly admitted liking bands like the Zippers, who I remember having a great time pogoing to at a New Wave clothing store in Westwood one Saturday night, and the Naughty Sweeties.
The three of us were able to slide right in to a booth directly in front of the band. I guess that Spike recruited a group of all-stars from the New York club scene for his Thursday night gigs at the Lakeside, and it was clear right away that the band had far more firepower than it needed to play these simple tunes. At times, two percussionists, three guitarists, and a bassist would all be plowing their way through a song, but every member seemed to know his or her place, deferring to the lead guitarist in his Steve McQueen shades to steal the limelight, the other guitars harmonizing in the background, at points bringing to mind Thin Lizzy and the Buzzcocks, the twin paragons of rock guitar harmony against which all others must be judged.
Then they started in on this perfect pop song that I assumed just had to be a Big Star cover, and said as much, until I realized that I didn’t know the words, and surely I would have already known a Big Star song this good and been singing its chorus, which was a typical lament of young love, about about how “every broken heart is like the first one”, along with the band. Here I am in the middle of Manhattan, escorting a couple of beautiful women, a cold beer in hand, listening to this perfect song, the kind Brian Wilson used to refer to as “teenage symphonies to God”. I was in bliss.
The third musical discovery during our New York trip lacked the accidental magic of the others, but it was probably the best find. It was hot and stuffy when we awoke the next morning in Becky’s apartment, the sun beating through the curtains, my brain bleary, and the Organic O’s or some such cereal about two steps tastier than cardboard stuck in my craw, while all I could think about was how good some buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup would taste. But, while it took awhile for me to notice, the music in the background was amazing. “What is that you’re playing?” I kept asking. “It’s the National, and quit asking, because I’m going to burn you a copy”, Becky replied.
After the National, Becky played us two or three other CD’s, the names of which escape me, as these groups will for me forever be the dim bulbs that dared shine their lights in the face of the sun. Because the National’s “Alligator” is just that good.
I guess these guys have been around for several years, so I might be coming a bit late to the party here. But let me say that the National’s “Alligator” rocks from first chord to last, like few albums I’ve heard in a long time.
On each of the twelve songs, the band has driven their tractor up the road to plow a different field. From the heavy rock drums of “Abel” , the driving bass and ringing guitars on songs like “Mr. November”, the pretty violin riff in “Val Jester”, the oboe and clarinet opening of “The Geese of Beverly Road”, each song has its musical pleasures, some out in the open and easy to find, other more reluctant ones that come to you in their good time.
There is also a unifying theme, which I would describe as the vibe of the young artist in New York City, the ecstatic selfishness of a bright-eyed cynic, defiantly shouting his joy to the world, yet with this creeping suspicion that a lot of folks just think he’s an asshole and that this will be crystal clear once the high wears off.
Matt Berninger’s lyrics are off-the-wall good, often making you laugh as they cut, with the added caveat that the deepest cuts are often self-imposed.
“It’s a common fetish for a doting man to ballerina on a coffee table cock in hand” Berninger sings to a waning and somewhat incredulous love in “Karen”, concluding by saying “Believe me, you just haven’t seen my good side yet”.
On “The Geese of Beverly Road”, he sings,“Hey love, we’ll get away with it, we’ll run like we’re awesome.” But the specifics of the invitation sound a lot less attractive: “Come be my waitress and serve me tonight. Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon”. “Looking for Astronauts” gives a more realistic assessment of what is means to be loved: “You know you have a permanent piece of my middle-sized American heart.”
If rock ‘n roll is about anything, it’s about the life affirming selfishness of youth. Who doesn’t want to be in the singer’s shoes when the National sing, “I am a festival; I’m a parade, and all the wine it’s all for me. I’m a birthday candle in a circle of black girls, because God is on my side. I’m sorry, the motorcade will have to go around me this time because God is on my side. And all the wine it’s all for me.”
And that’s just how I felt when I flew back to Chicago that Sunday.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Sigur Ros at the Civic Opera House (Chicago-May 9, 2006)

As an old punk rocker who, in my devolution over the past couple of decades, has developed an appreciation for the more transcendent moments of classical music, I’ve been awaiting the composer who could bridge the chasm between underground, edgy rock ‘n roll and the classical world, for an Arvo Part or a Gorecki to take those ecstatic moments I feel in Symphony Hall and cross the transom to the club world full of kids. But so far to no avail.
I guess Philip Glass came the closest, at least in terms of pop star power. But Glass’s music appeals primarily to aging hippies and East Coast dilettantes. Besides, while he livened up Koyannisquatsi some 20-odd years ago, Glass’ emotional pallet always struck me as rather thin, and he long ago proved to be just another lost opportunity. I admit he brings a modern cadence to classical counterpoint, but that at best makes him a kind of second rate Bach, toiling in the mathematical workshop but lacking the passion and melody that defines almost all great music.
Worse are all the young, mostly privileged phenoms that classical institutions keep foisting on the public. I think the root of the problem is that for the last 40 years, at least in America, the kids who grow up playing classical music are the compliant ones, the kids who do what they’re told, who come home and dutifully practice their Hannon scales, the yawp-less ones unlikely to stir things up or create anything new. You’re not going to get a Beethoven or a Messiaen out of that lot.
I cringe when these young classical musicians try to act hip in their interviews, invoking their love of Frank Zappa or live musical theatre as proof that they are in touch with modern culture. It seems every up-and-coming conductor is a fan of Frank Zappa, which is a crock of shit, first because Frank Zappa couldn’t write a powerful melody or an evocative lyric for all the hash in Humboldt County, and this speaks volumes for the kind of music being favored by these folks, but more importantly because they can’t ALL love Frank Zappa. OK, Jim Zorn probably loves Frank Zappa, and maybe Philip Glass loves Frank Zappa, but pretty soon Frank Zappa quits being Frank Zappa, the overindulgent hippy jam freak, and becomes an icon, a touchstone to prove that you are culturally valid, and it is this kind of paint-by-numbers deference to the accepted esthetic norms that is killing classical music in the first place.
It wasn’t until I was sitting in the Civic Opera House last week listening to Animaa, the opening band on the Sigur Ros tour, that I had the somewhat obvious revelation that the bridge between classical music and rock ‘n roll is being charted by European rock ‘n rollers, in touch with both their culture’s classical roots and the current musical zeitgeist, and not by American classical musicians, who, as a generalization, are in touch with neither.
Animaa is an Icelandic string quartet and a back up group for Sigur Ros. They suffuse their compositions with a hodgepodge of other sounds besides strings, from a vibraphone and a musical saw to a variety of digital samples. At their best, they bring to mind the work of the modern classical composer Gavin Bryars, who will repeat an evocative riff to the point of absurdity, wringing out every possible nuance.
The ways Bryars and Animaa are alike hint at a path for the modern composer of both classical music and electronica, as both genres have shed some of the more annoying aspects of their respective institutions, and both reflect how the notion of what it means to be entertained has evolved.
For 150 years, from the early 19th- to the late 20th Century, classical composers felt the need to vary the pace as a way to keep an auditorium full of listeners attention. So after the andante movement would come the allegro movement. That may have made sense in the old concert halls, but some of these abrupt transitions strike my post-punk ears as unwelcome deviations on a theme. For instance, Richard Strauss will follow a great aria or a memorable, brassy bombast with several bars of goofy tweets and twiddles that sound like background music for a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Back in the day, Strauss was trying to tell a story with his music. But we don’t need classical music to tell us a story; we have film, television, and a host of other media for that. We come to classical music for its unparalleled depth and harmony, among other things, and a lot of these more overeager shifts in tone are, at least to my ears, a distraction. The more consistent cadence found in most music before the Romantic era is something to which many “postmodern” composers, such as Part, Nanes, and Bryars, have returned. Unlike most 19th and 20th Century composers, they do net feel compelled to create opportunities for grandstanding sprinkled amidst their beautiful themes.
The brief history of electronica and its relationship to rock ‘n roll tells a similar story. Rock has historically demanded blood, sweat, and tears (at least one and often more of these) from its stars. Whether it be Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Bruce Springsteen, or Prince, rock stars are as much personalities as they are troubadours, and the audience expects to see them let it all hang out on stage. Electronica turns this concept on its head, as the performer is there to play music, not to put on a show. Admittedly, this can make for some pretty boring concerts, but it also frees the electronica musician from some of the claptrap that goes with being a rock star; they can approach a live performance much more like a jazz or classical musician might, in that they aren’t compelled to develop some sort of schtick. The trick is how to get rid of some of the sideshow aspects of the rock tour without losing the ability to rock.
It helps if you are Sigur Ros. To write songs that only the 300,000 odd souls who speak Icelandic can understand is a pop death wish, and to record an album in your own invented language of Hopelandish is so obscure as to be absurd, but Sigur Ros burst on the global music scene six years ago, selling several hundred thousands copies of their album “ágætis byrjun”, and they have not looked back. They are currently on an extensive tour of the U.S., with last week’s sold-out show at the Civic Opera House following last September’s date at the Chicago Theatre, and the single “Hoppipolla” off their latest album “Takk” is currently rising up the English singles charts.
Very few rock ‘n roll moments have matched the stunned bliss I felt when I first listened to “agaetis byrjun”. There are times in the dead of winter, late January nights where the mind is so starved for a little light and inspiration that it creates its own, and the most mundane of pleasures can seem profound and perfect, when all of life, seemingly out of nowhere, becomes an ecstasy. On several of these nights, the chorus of “Staalfur” has run through my brain, it’s insensible vocals echoing my reverie while I look out the window at the shadows of the yellow street lights echoing off the snow.
As best as I can glean from the liner art and general tone of the music, “agaetis byrjun” tells the melancholic tale of the birth, travails and triumphs of a fantastic creature, part angel, part alien, part uberman. And that is another conceit of this music that has a lot in common with the great classical composers, that music can tell a tale even if you don’t understand any of the words. Like Beethoven believed that his Ninth Symphony conveyed the strivings of mankind for universal brotherhood, so a rock ‘n roll record could tell the story of the birth of a transcendent being without the listening understanding a single word. From the depths of winter, springs belief.
While “Takk” doesn’t have the same kind of unifying theme as “agaetis byrun”, it probably has a better collection of individual songs, and these songs form the backbone of the current tour. Whereas “agaetis byrjun” is its own beast, on “Takk” you can see how the band is the logical extension of a few fairly divergent rock themes.
For instance, Sigur Ros has broken down the elements of a the 70’s rock anthem and used them for its own devices. I’d say that a song like “Saeglopur” owes a debt to the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” or maybe some of the more magisterial musings of mid-70’s Deep Purple, but really its the other way around, that “Saeglopur” tapped the mother load of arena rock sentiment and brought it to its logical conclusion, that a hundred years from now rock anthropologists will point to Deep Purple and say, “Look this idea finally found its fruition in Sigur Ros, like a soaring bird rising from the ashes of a troglodyte.”
On a song like “Se lest”, Sigur Ros use pretty classical vibraphones and bells, experimenting in the same realm as Tortoise, but once again adding the classic rock riff. If the members of Journey took their coke-inspired melodies, sung them in the language of the Vikings, and then asked Tom Waits to orchestrate the mess, you’d have something like “Se lest”.
The first song on Tuesday’s encore, titled “Daudalagid”, slowed down to the point where it seemed like the entire band was going to freeze in place all together, channeling the 80’s metal band St. Vitus Dance, but on strong barbiturates.
The final encore, “Popplagid”, from the untitled album “()”, captured another vein tapped by Sigur Ros, that of the 80’s industrial band. With the tempo slowly building to a pounding beat, backed by a strobe-inspired video projection, I felt like I was watching classic Ministry, except Sigur Ros have more expensive video equipment and better chops.
It goes without saying that the sound was great at the Lyric Opera House, especially compared with rock caverns like the Aragon Ballroom, but it was also true that it took a few songs for the sound person to adjust the various amplifications to fit the room. So on a couple of the early songs, such as “Saeglopur”, the soaring choruses were hard to hear over the instrumental crescendos. And the band lost it in the middle of “Hoppipolla”, when for several bars it sounded like half of them were playing the bridge while others had moved on to the chorus.
But in the big picture, these were quibbles. On most of the songs, the sound, even from my perch in the lower section of the upper balcony, was crisp, distinct, beautiful. And I don’t think I’ve ever sat with 4,000 fans at a rock show in such rapt attention.
Once, in a another lifetime, during my brief dalliance with the rock ‘n roll bug, I was in a band called The Nymphs that was recording a demo in a studio owned by a member of Bad Religion, who asked everyone in the studio a riddle, which I quickly solved, and I think this ticked him off a bit, because he then dismissively quipped, “What are you doing here? You’re too smart to be playing rock ‘n roll.” Which was probably true for just about everyone in that band, as we were all a bunch of intellectual loners trying to get our shrunken ya ya’s out. But that moment has stuck with me. Was he dissing me for not being cut from the same cloth as real rockers, for in essence being a poseur, or was he criticizing his rock ‘n roll brethren for being a bunch of idiots?
Sigur Ros turn this concept on its head. I guess there have been other rock icons who’ve made smart music for smart people: Brian Eno comes immediately to mind. But most of the “smart” rockers are more along the lines of Lou Reed and Billy Corgan, intelligent guys to be sure, but not too smart, still simple enough to be arrogant and cocksure.
To be in a hall full of hip kids leaning forward in their seats, straining at times to take it all in, was a new experience for me. Like the stories you hear about Mozart being able to raise your baby’s I.Q., Sigur Ros seem to raise the musical intelligence of their listeners, bringing the crowd of mostly 20- and 30-somethings into the realm of the symphonic hall without ever losing the immediacy of the rock ‘n roll moment.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Homily for Chuck and Nicole's Wedding

Friends and family,

We are gathered here to celebrate the marriage of Nicole and Charles.

Nietzsche said that man is a rope, tied between a beast and the uberman, a rope over an abyss, and that what can be loved about man is that we are an overture, noting that “one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star”.

On this slow, evolutionary path from ape to angel that we are on, the relationship between a man and a woman is the dynamo that drives this change. When Jesus said, “You shall cleave together as man and wife, and the two shall become one flesh”, he was not saying this as practical advice, like a divine Dear Abby. No. This statement is a dare, an imperative to propel both an individual man and woman along with the collective of mankind on to greater things.

The ancient Greeks believed that the eternally bound together couple made a third being, which was comprised of the two individuals but had a seperate identity.

Charles and Nicole certainly have that. They have their seperate lives, Charles with his skateboarding and Nicole with her work as a photo editor. But their corporate body, not Snap Cult, their company, but corporate in the sense of collective, being bound together, their corporate identity, the wacky sarcasm that they share, their fascination with cool music and kung fu, their rejection of mainstream claptrap, and their pursuit of their own paths in life, are something they shared and developed together, something that, if not greater, is at least a magnification of its parts.

Nicole and Charles have been together since they were teenagers, which is a rare thing in this day and age, and they’ve traversed the flotsam of modern culture, together finding their place in this world. And it is this relationship, the corporate Chuck and Nicole as well as their private, individual selves, that we celebrate today, as well as marking this as a sacrament between them and our collective posterity.

The Vows:

Do you Charles A Booth, take Nicole to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and hold, to honor and cherish, and vicey versey, till death do you part?

Do you Nicole B Radja, take Charles to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and hold, to honor and cherish, and vicey versey, till death do you part?


Exchange rings

I now pronounce you man and wife.
Charles, you may kiss the bride.

Alright, let’s eat some ribs.