Seldom in American politics has the same side of a single party split into such distinct and acrimonious factions. As virtually identical as the two candidates are in their political positions, there is no longer any common cause left between Hillary lovers and Obama supporters. There is only a culture war of epic proportions, featuring some of the most unlikely and absurd combatants in the history of impassioned conflict. Ordinary suburban Americans, people who consider Tina Fey biting satire and whose only “fighting” experience has usually been against trans fats or hair loss, can now be seen running through the streets, screaming war calls like Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of Nepal.
And that’s not even the best of it. No one has done a better job of explaining the bug-eyed spit n’ spew anti-Obama lunacy you see on sites like No Quarter and HillaryIs44 than Taibbi does on page two. Just go read it.
RELATED: Taibbi’s new book The Great Derangement is out now. You can learn more about it here and find out if he’s doing a reading in your area (NYC—June 6th—Barnes & Noble Tribeca).
Sorry for the lack of blogging. I took a huge and tragic spill on a hill I had no business skateboarding down back when I was in college and, as a result, I occasionally throw my back out, so I’ve been laid out flat for the past two days. Here’s a quickee post for you to enjoy and then I’m going to crawl back on the couch.
Guitarist extraordinaire Gary Lucas hosted a “Beefheart Night” back on April 9th at the Knitting Factory here in NYC. Gary played with his fantastic all-instrumental Captain Beefheart cover band Fast ‘N’ Bulbous (their CD Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind is highly recommended) and several fans and friends of Don Van Vliet spoke in between the band’s two sets. David Lynch sent in a cool little video of himself reading ”Pena," too. The highlight was a surprise appearance by the legendary Robyn Hitchcock at the tail end of the evening, who performed three songs with Lucas accompanying him on the steel guitar. A few weeks ago I uploaded my video of them doing “Sure ‘Nuff ‘N’ Yes I Do” to YouTube and yesterday Lucas contacted me to let me know that both he and Hitchock really enjoyed seeing it, so I uploaded their version of “China Pig” today (unfortunately, I didn’t record their last song “Click Clack"). Enjoy.
We all know that artists see things differently from the rest of us, but how many folks watch a grainy video of hooded captors shouting demands over a shuddering abductee and think, Ah! Romance! It turns out there are at least two: Clay McLeod Chapman and Kyle Jarrow. In their first collaboration, the rock musical Hostage Song, the playwright and lyricist-composer imagine a man and a woman—bound and blindfolded by an unnamed militia—who somehow manage to fall a little bit in love. At first blush, it may sound like an Eli Roth flick with jazz hands, but the result is a devastatingly poignant, strangely philosophical meditation on salvation that just happens to sport a sick downbeat.
My wife Chris is a pretty huge fan of the long dormant band Firewater and I like ‘em a lot, too, so we were both surprised to find out yesterday that they’re quietly releasing an album in early May called The Golden Hour (MP3 download via the link). Three years ago the group’s front man Tod A, newly divorced and depressed ("The NYC skyline looked like bad wallpaper to me"), embarked on “a three year sabbatical through the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and South East Asia” and recorded local musicians everywhere he went. Many of these “field” recordings are going to be incorporated into the new release and on May 26th Firewater will be performing at the Bowery Ballroom here in NYC. Check out the “infomercial” for The Golden Hour embedded below. It’s very interesting. More bands should think about doing advance promotion like this.
Blitzen Trapper live at Mercury Lounge, July, 2007 (full concert here)
Blitzen Trapper, whose album Wild Mountain Nation was picked as our best of 2007, will be playing at Bowery Ballroom at the end of this month (the 29th, to be precise). My wife Chris and I caught their live show unexpectedly in Seattle on a layover and they were wonderful. The performance was reminiscent of the high-energy and adorably scattered mid-years Pavement shows. Highly recommended. As an added bonus, they’re sharing the bill with their label mates Fleet Foxes, who our pals at FREEwilly dig (us, too) and their new EP “Sun Giant” is sure to litter best-of lists near and far at the tail end of ‘08. That’s what we call a win-win. Cash in on it if you’re a big applette.
Really shitty cell phone picture of the Beastie Boys’ heads
Went to see them last night at Terminal 5. Not a bad venue, but the sound sucked. MCA wasn’t into it. The tops of all of their heads looked great. The girl next to me said they “looked old.” She was what we refer to in the business as “an asshole.” “Lighten Up” was cool because Mr. Fuzzy Head, who may or may not have been this guy, played the woo-woo machine. Some NJ fuck knuckle with raging neck fat really got into the encore ("Sabotage"). Guys were selling balloons of nitrous oxide (3 for $20) on the street after the show, something I’ve never seen in NYC before (after 17 years here, I don’t say that often). On the subway ride home, I found out my wife Chris knows nearly all of the (discernible) lyrics to ”B-Boy Bouillabaisse” (yet another reason I love her). We went to a really disgusting neighborhood diner because we hadn’t eaten dinner. Afterwards I had ”bad breath onion rings” (I didn’t realize the irony until this morning). The end.
UPDATE FROM READER H.S. IN COMMENTS: “Actually, the show has been sold out since the day it went on sale. The tickets available on Ticketmaster.com now are through auction only.”
TO MY GREAT CHAGRIN: The eagerly-awaited (in my house, at least) world premiere of the documentary To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore comes to MOMA this Wednesday, February 13th (also playing on March 1st). He was a complex, brilliant and vastly underrated performance artist and you can view some of his pitch-perfect and hysterical ravings in a video compilation we posted here back in September.
FUERZABRUTA: Friday I took my lovely wife Chris to see Fuerzabruta, the new spectacle from the creators of De La Guarda, for her birthday at the Daryl Roth Theatre and was totally blown away by it. I enjoyed De La Guarda, but thought it was a little over-hyped and found myself wishing it would come to an end about 45-minutes into it. Fuerzabruta, on the other hand, I never wanted to end, noticing at several points during the performance that my face was smeared with a thoroughly ridiculous shit-eating grin that only a child can accommodate without feeling like a complete tool. As an added bonus, I was selected by one of the Fuerzabruta “dancers” to join her on a metal platform and dance in front of hundreds of people before having an oversized, exploding paper cinderblock dropped on our heads. According to Chris the crowd was cheering me on (I inserted several of my death-defying robot maneuvers into my routine) and afterwards the dancer came over and gave me a big thumbs up when she found me back in the crowd. If you’re a New Yorker, I highly recommend checking this show out. If the $72 price tag is too steep for you, they sell $25 rush tix at the box office two hours before each performance.
Here’s a sneak peek at Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls,” which will send water cascading from under the Brooklyn Bridge and from three free-standing scaffolds in New York Harbor — including this view of Governors Island off Red Hook — from July through October.
In the spirit of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates” project, Eliasson’s $15 million art project will consist of four waterfalls, towering between 90 and 120 feet, that will gush between 7 am and 10 pm every day.
You can view all of the waterfall images here. You can check out more of Eliasson’s work here.
Jeffrey Lewis—“Anxiety Attack” (unauthorized fan video)
The Hyena and Other Men: If you’re a New Yorker you’ve only got a few days left to immerse yourself in Pieter Hugo’s stunning exhibit at the Yossi Milo Gallery. It’s comprised of large-scale photographs of a band of Nigerian men who roam the country with a menagerie of animals and a six-year-old girl named Mummy. You can view most of the photos at the gallery (and many, many more) here (hint: view images separately—right-click), but the small JPGs are nowhere near as impactful as witnessing them blown up and surrounding you.
Butter 08: Egg City Radio is giving away Butter 08’s way-fun and punk-funky (and out-of-print) selt-titled ‘96 release featuring Miho from Cibo Matto and Russell from the Blues Explosion. From Miho saying, “Thank you, daddy” to the last throbbing yelps of “Butterfucker,” this delivers great gifts to your needy assbone.
Why I Believe Bush Must Go: George McGovern writes an editorial in The Washington Post calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Yes, that sound you hear off in the distance is the howler monkeys of the right going batshit.
This is a quick reminder guide for my fellow Big Applets:
Williamsburg: Go to the Rwanda Reporting benefit tonight at Supreme Trading featuring a performance by Francis and the Lights, free hard-to-find Rwandan food and an hour’s worth of complimentary Bass beer. The donation is a measly $20.
Manhattan: Go to see the wonderful and unique documentary Billy the Kid that opened last night at the IFC Center for a limited engagement. I haven’t had time to finish my review, but you can read some of the raves at Metacritic.
Manhattan: Go to see the long-awaited Holy Modal Rounders documentary Bound to Lose (and accompanying live music bonuses) at the Anthology during its one-week run (starts this Friday).
UPDATE: In comments the delightful and reliable Robin from oh. you. again. recommends buying tix for Au Revoir Parapluie (Farewell, Umbrella) at BAM in downtown Brooklyn. I’m doing that right now.
FANTASTIC DOCUMENTARY COMING TO NYC: The wonderful and unique documentary Billy the Kid is opening this Wednesday, December 5th at the IFC Center in Manhattan for a limited engagement. Carve out some room for it if you live in NYC because it’s highly recommended. Make sure to check out the excellent trailer at the documentary’s web site (or these outtakes at YouTube). You can read our review of it at some point tomorrow here at Rumproast.
UPDATE: A new entry for our horribly neglected Worst.Band.Name.Ever category. One of the bands opening for Mudhoney tonight is called Pissed Jeans. No matter how good they are a little part of me will always hate them for that.
Normally I only write ”The Selector” on Sundays but I am so freakin’ excited about the new documentary Bound to Lose that I had to shoehorn in another post. The Holy Modal Rounders were the most godwonderful skull fuck to crawl out of the NYC folk scene in the early 60’s. Their first two albums, unimaginatively titled The Holy Modal Rounders and The Holy Modal Rounders 2, stand to this day as first-rate alterna-folk treasures and have thankfully been re-released by Fantasy as a jam-packed two-fer that is one of the best deals you can find on a single CD today.
I had the pleasure and displeasure of seeing the reunited Rounders twice in the late 90’s in NYC. The first show at the now extinct Bottom Line was a real treat, an ear-to-ear smile-athon ... just way too much fun. So much fun, in fact, that a totally inebriated Steve Weber (is there any other?) had to, quite literally, be dragged off stage. The second show I witnessed at the also extinct Tonic was a contentious mess, Weber and Peter Stampfel clearly not enjoying being in the same room together, let alone sharing the same planet. Bound to Lose appears to cover all of the love and all of the loathing and it has finally crawled (probably on its belly) to NYC for a seven day run (12/7-12/13) at the Anthology Film Archives. The first and last nights will feature performances by Stampfel (with Jeffrey Lewis & the Jitters--and an open bar--and Gary Lucas, respectively) and they’ve tucked all sorts of goodies into the length of the run (including playwrite and ex-Rounder Sam Shepard rejoining Stampfel for a performance at Pianos following the 12/9 showing).
For more information, check out the film’s MySpace page (you can see the trailer and an outtake there, as well) or look below the fold for the info I lovingly cut n’ pasted for your edification.
Brilliant stuff at the Morning News. Olivo Barbieri utilizes a technique called “selected focus” using a tilt-shift lens to make aerial photographs look like snaps of miniature models (scroll down for a brief interview with Barbieri). He currently has a show at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in Manhattan (address below the fold) that runs until December 22nd.
