808/pacific state!

808/pacific state!
It's feast or famine I guess. Here's the second post in two days, a nice oceanic follow up to yesterday's piece.


I originally wrote this in December of 2006. I just dug it up and tweaked it slightly.

808 State- "Pacific State"--- 1989 Calming, water lapping feet, dolphins dancing. But also neon, strobe, taxi rides, subway trains, coffee, liquor, cigarettes, ecstasy, cocaine, sex, steel, glass, concrete, dense populations, rushing. Either way, a rush. It's kind of sad though with the alto[?] sax bringing melancholy, calling me a loser for not hearing this classic till 16 years after it hit the dance floor. The sax is also of the blues, lamenting the era that has passed that was actually very present when the cut was first blasted on high powered night club PAs. It's a blues in hindsight, because when it was first played, it was new, fresh, innovative. Now the sing-songy looping keyboard synth sounds dated, demolished like the Hacienda itself. You can't go home again.


It also sounds a bit sleazy; the saxophone (or is it clarinet? or a synthetic melding of the two?) and propulsive pounding beat recalls half-remembered, half imagined, always fuzzy porn movies. And the encapsulated sleaze was also very real in '89: the desperate dance floor outing, which leads to the desperate dance floor grind (cock into denim), which leads to the desperate salivating kiss, which leads to the desperate shared cab at 3:30, and the desperate shared bed, and the desperate grinding sheets. And the sleaze is not just pheromonal, it's also synthetic: roughly cut cocaine, and what is dancing with out pills? The song recalls the sleaze of dancing as a means to another end.

But the song sounds lonely, recalling the nearly empty dance floor perhaps on an off night near close, or 10PM when no one with self-consciousness has yet made an appearance. It recalls the sleaze of 80s excess (and timeless excess: Excess then! Excess now! Excess later!) but also the spirituality of the solitary dancer, out for the beat and not the hook up.

And it also sounds dangerously close to smooth jazz: the saxophone, a trapping of the true Blue Note, re-contextualized with a propulsive beat to become waiting room wallpaper.

"Pacific State" has both beauty and cheese, but it's the mix that saves it from the smooth pap. There's a hint of rawness in its sailing. It's dangerously close to smooth jazz, but danger can be beautiful. It makes the heart beat fast.

Ocean Blue Sunshower!

It's been a while since a song has grabbed me by the throat and made me fall in love with it before I'm even finished hearing it for the first time. But that just happened, now. (OK, actually exactly 12 minutes ago). I was dreaming in my kitchen with an internet radio station on and then all of a sudden this song hit:



Immediately I was headbopping. This was ecstatic pop with a UK lilt and a guitar riff straight out of The Edge's soaring, reverberant U2* playbook of U2's*. The song sounded both like an artifact of the mid 80s and a timeless droplet coming down from heaven through a hole in my roof. It had me turning up the volume and dancing around my kitchen.

One could call the song's sound "derivative," but what does that matter? It's made me deliriously happy.

And now I've found it online and have listened to it on repeat 5 times through. I'm enjoying the (apparently) American vocalist's wavering between British affectation and slightly off-key sincerity. It's making me nostalgic for some mid 90s high school love affair I never had. And the song's adding sun to this showering November morning.

I'm a sucker for upbeat songs about heartbreak. They're bittersweet. I can relate. "Bittersweet" seems a summation of my life. Joy and disappointment always seem to go hand in hand.


So who is it? What is it? The song is "Sunshower" by The Ocean Blue, originally released on an EP in 2004....I've never heard of the Ocean Blue before, though apparently they started in this part of the world (Hershey, PA--- the land of chocolate) and have been around since 1987. Now I'm debating whether to listen to more of their stuff or just keep blasting "Sunshower" on repeat. I fear I may have stumbled upon their best song first and am just setting myself for disappointment if I delve beyond this 3 and half minute pop gem.
Enjoy.

*(while a rather lightweight fan of U2's catalog overall, the band's ecstatic soaring guitar debut "Boy" is one of my favorite albums of all time)

Today is my birthday, fittingly this is one of my favorite songs...

I turned 29 shortly after 8 this morning.
and this song is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard:


the Sugarcubes- "Birthday" (live)



The big ball of joy,sorrow, and mystery wrapped up in Bjork's "oh, oh, oh, ohwoahweeohh" brings tears to my eyes.

at 3:47, I think Bjork is saying " her birthday" but I swear it sounds like "Sebastian"!

It might sound ridiculous, but it's gems like this that keep me alive in tough times...

1236 words about Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" (with Kerouac + the Cruise +Empire Records digressions.)

I wish it could always feel like this:


That video is a pretty good translation of what it's like inside my head when my mood swings up (which has happened NOW).

I feel ridiculously happy, boundlessly energetic, young, invincible, twitchy, and a bit incoherent. Like the visuals here, my mind jumps from one thing to the next. The world feels beautifully dizzying and I have trouble articulating how I feel to anyone outside my skull.

And often there's music playing. If my mood swing isn't accompanied by good music actually playing nearby, then I bring my own music. When headphones aren't available I just let music play inside my head from memory. Often during these swings, this very Sonic Youth song is the one playing in my head.

This song calls for speed. As in velocity, not meth. The tempo is fast and I find it hard to sit still when it's playing. I always thought this song would be great for the opening of a late 80s left-field teen movie:

The movie opens with our hero in bed in a messy bedroom, mattress on floor, Gibson and amp in the corner, Clash poster on the wall. He's overslept. He wakes with a start as Thurston's riff kicks, realizing he has to be at his job at the pizza joint across town in 5 MINUTES! He runs out the door while still buttoning his jeans. His mom tries to kiss him, nearly getting knocked over in the rush. "What's the hurry, honey?!" she says in surprise and mild distress.

Moments later, our hero is on his bike, pedaling furiously. He passes by characters on the sidewalk who we'll get to meet later in this unmade movie. The look in his eyes tells the movie-goer that our hero is a bit nervous, but he's glad to be alive on a sunny late morning in California (because where else could a late 80s teen movie take place? That stuff has to be GOLDEN, palmed!)

He skids into the pizza shop parking lot. A Pepsi or Coke sign is on the building's wall (for sly product placement.) The paunchy middle-aged boss is standing at the door in his apron. He looks at his watch and then at our hero, now running towards the door from his bike with a slight sheen of sweat. The boss shakes his head. This is obviously not the first time our high school hero has been late. A barely perceptible smile creeps onto the boss' face, as if to say "oh you crazy rascal. You're a good kid. I was once like you, so I'll let you go this one last time."

As Thurston closes the song with "...on the riot trail" the camera goes for a close up of our winded hero's face. He wipes his brow and exhales, relieved as he walks inside for another day at the pizza shop. But we all know that since it's a movie, this will be ANYTHING BUT just another day at the pizza shop...

Quite honestly, that doubly fictitious screenplay excerpt has played in my head a number of times as my own actions and reality have mirrored that of our pizza-tossing hero. I've run out the door and hopped on my bike many mornings running late.
I take Springfield Ave to 47th. 47th to the Gaey's Ferry Bridge. On the Bridge I dodge broken glasses and nails in the barely existent bike lane while below me there's a brief marshy stretch of post-industrial wasteland along the banks of the Schuylkill. Then I turn right at the FedEx and boom! i'm at work. Just behind FedEx is the lot for Philadelphia Trolley Works/Big Bus Company. I work as a tour guide on top of a double decker bus.

It's sort of like this, except less nasally, obviously not in NYC, and in color:



Yes, my job might seem more interesting than that of our pizza shop protagonist. But I'm 10 years older than our hero, inevitably less handsome than the Corey look-alike who'd get cast in the movie and my boss isn't a fatherly small town business owner. Instead my boss is a cheapskate millionaire who barely maintains the 30 year old fleet of diesel-spewing vehicles, views his workers as expendable, and might just be cheating on his taxes.

Should I even put that in print?

Regardless, when I get to work sweaty, out of breath, and late there's no benevolent head shake and subtle smile. There's only the threat that I'll be removed from the schedule. And on rare occasions I have been sent home.

But when I do make it to work by the skin of my teeth (and the strength of my upper legs) I feel satisfied and alive. My blood is flowing and my heart's pounding. I've gone from 0 to wired in 10 minutes. "Teenage Riot" in my head is often the propulsion.
I sing it in my head, but I NEVER have it on headphones when biking.

For the record, I think riding with headphones in traffic is stupid and dangerous. If you throw in a fixed gear and no helmet, it's even more stupid. And this is coming from someone who broke his leg in a bike accident 2 1/2 years ago. So people you know DO get seriously hurt in bike accidents....rant over...and now back to our regularly scheduled RIOT-----

Sonic Youth had an incredible missed opportunity when they played a rare DIY(ish) R5 Productions show at the Starlight Ballroom here in Philly in the summer of '06. Naturally the show was sold out. Naturally it was incredibly hot. And not surprisingly, SY was late taking the stage. The fans were packed in and restless. Everyone was ready to rock out. "Teenage Riot"--- a classic beloved by hardcore fan and casual listener alike would've been the perfect opener. But no, the show started with a song off their most recent album, "Rather Ripped." It had been released just a few days prior. It seemed like few fans in attendance had heard the album and fewer had had time to digest and appreciate it.

Soon I'd grow to love "Rather Ripped." And while I may be in the minority here, it's become my favorite SY album. I like it better than then classic Daydream Nation that includes "Teenage Riot." Blasphemy? Perhaps, but I can't argue with the fact that I play DD maybe once for every 5 times I play RR.

Still, "Teenage Riot" is a great song and one of the best in the Sonic catalog. Anticipating the band taking the stage, I had visions of the entire place singing along to "Teenage Riot", people stage diving and generally losing their shit out of pure reckless joy.

Oh well. I'm sure the band has played the song literally hundreds of times. And their newer material is probably more meaningful and satisfying for them to play these days.
So it's understandable why they'd open the show with a new one.

But back to the song's video:

It captures the excitement of the song in a non-linear way that suggests the frenzy of my hypo-manic moodswing mind and what it's like to be teenager on a sugar high** . The video doesn't try to tell a story to go along with the song. It just gives a picture of pure yet unsteady energy and creative drive. And happiness! Everyone is smiling in the video. The 8mm footage of the band rocking out cartoonishly throughout the video makes them seem like a bunch of high schoolers in a basement who can't play their instruments but still have a great time making up for that lack with excitement and attitude. And then you've got guest appearances by a cavalcade of stars. These are the heroes of Sonic Youth. And some of them were my heroes too, intensely admired in my volatile high school days.

Each time I've watched the video, I've caught more faces.

Here's a partial list (some of these may be wrong since these clips shift so quickly) Quite literally, if you blink you might miss some one:

Patti Smith (twice!), Paul Reubens, Kiss, Iggy Pop, Jack Kerouac*, Henry Rollins, the Beach Boys, Sun Ra, Neil Young, MC5 (or at least their White Panther button), the Minutemen, Ian MacKaye, Joni Mitchell, and William Burroughs.
And during the instrumental break around the 3 minute mark, the visuals switch to a few seconds of just colored stage lights, evoking the feeling of incoherent "pure yet unsteady energy."

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*This brief view of Kerouac comes from my favorite clip of him. Of all the heroes shown in the video, Kerouac was probably the most important and influential on me. I was drawn to the myth of Kerouac and the freewheelin' hitch-hiking life. I was fascinated that Kerouac's own writing and life didn't quite live up to his myth's promise.
He was a flawed, anxious, angry, alcoholic, contradictory, misogynist, bigoted man. He also wrote a lot of self-indulgent crap. And he kind of wrote the same book 10 times. But when he was good, he was GREAT. And he had a wonderful speaking voice. Most of his jazz + spoken word recordings don't really mesh. But this one does. This is everything I love about Kerouac condensed into three and a half minutes.


I love the way he says the word "rags" and his accompanying facial expression at 3:10.
His lost puppy dog expression during the closing applause makes me want to reach through the years give him a hug.

I read in his Selected Letter that he vomited immediately after leaving the stage.

**Also, while I'm off on a tangent, "Teenage Riot" would've made a much better closing song than "Sugar High" for the awful Empire Records movie. If Renee Zellweger and company had mimed on the marquee to this tune instead of what they actually used then maybe (just maybe) that movie could've been salvaged.


This relates to my 80s teen movie screenplay idea, though Empire Records was actually mid 90s vintage. I saw the movie for the first time this past year. And my initial urge was to throw the VHS to the curb. Any movie set at a record store has SO MUCH POTENTIAL (and "Hi Fidelity" actually delivered on that potential more or less.) There are so many opportunities to slip in music nerdiness-- such as cult classic bands on the sound track, cult classic band posters shown fleetly in the background of scenes, cult classic bands at least mentioned by the characters.

But no! Despite being set at a independent record store, fighting fiercely to maintain its independence, the Empire Recods store is a thinly-veiled shopping mall Sam Goody's. And on top of the disappointment of the movie's denial of the existence of any non-mainstream music,the plot calls for disbelief to be suspended at least 90 percent of the time. At least I saw the film after I already knew what could and could not happen in teenage lives. I feel bad for the kids who saw this when they were 12 and thought, "gee whiz, when I get to high school, it's gonna be awesome!"

Some of my friends love this movie out of pure nostalgia, but watching it just made me angry. The movie feels like a product of 50 year old suit-and-ties sitting around a Hollywood boardroom saying "now how can we tap into today's youth market?" but then moving forward on the project without actually consulting anyone younger than forty.

On the plus side, Liv Tyler is very attractive in the movie. As a product of Catholic Schooling, her short plaid skirts equal nostalgic hotness for me, though I think I prefer her as an elf.

1170 words about the Mission of Burma LP reissues

NEWS FLASH: After finishing this up a few days ago, it was announced that Mission of Burma will be playing Philadelphia Friday 6/27 at the First Unitarian. The show will center around songs from their 1st two records "Signals Call and Marches" and "Vs." Tickets are on sale this Sunday 5/11. $18. I urge you to get one. I promise you won't regret it.
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This may come across as an advertisement for the recent Mission of Burma LP reissues--- and maybe it is--- but it comes from the heart (the Ace of Hearts!) and I'm not getting a kickback for it. I have the urge to gush because the vinyl reissues of "Signals, Calls and Marches" "Vs." and "the Horrible Truth About Burma" have made me so happy recently. They look, sound, and feel great.

I never before had "real" copies of any of these albums, just faceless CDRs. But the full package experience has been so much more satisfying. I've been a big fan of vinyl since even before round physical mediums of music storage became obsolete. And these Burma records only increase my love.

So what makes these records so great? Well, first off, they're very satisfying musically. It's early 80s Bostonian post-punk. The songs are catchy and melodic, yet angular and threaded through by the tape loop experiments of off-stage member Martin Swope.
Swope took the sounds made by the guitar/bass/drums and voices of Roger Miller/Clint Conley /Peter Prescott, played around with them and spit them back into the mix as reconfigured textural elements.

You non-fans out there may already be familiar with what might be Burma's two most catchy anthemic songs-- "Academy Fight Song" and "That's When I Reach For My Revolver." Both are great angsty fist-in-the-air sing-a-longs.

The reissue packaging is also beautiful-- thick gatefold covers with booklets of present day interviews with the band and well-captioned pictures of the band in their heyday and pictures of original lyric sheets and equipment diagrams. And while the original releases were single records, they've all been rereleased with bonus tracks. And the bonus tracks are included on separate discs so preserved is the original flow of the albums (Ok "Signals..." is technically an EP.) And none of these bonus tracks is a sloucher either.

And the vinyl itself is heavvvy: 180 gram, maybe twice the weight of a "regular" LP. This heavy, high-quality vinyl is not only less prone to warping, it also also makes the music grooved on it seem more substantial since the medium is so weighty. Listening to these records there's a bit of synesthesia. The packaging and black plastic seem to merge with the sounds so it all seems to be coming at you through the speakers. You can't get this feeling from an mp3.

Admittedly vinyl is an inconvenient medium when moving about. But that's OK. These Burma LPs come with a free mp3 download of the whole album, so you get the best of both worlds. And that's good for me right NOW. While writing this, I'm sitting with headphones and a laptop in a coffee shop where I can't very well be spinning my 180 gram vinyl beauties.

And along with the bonus tracks and mp3s you get a live DVD with each set. And most of this video footage has never before been released. The 1980 footage included shows the band looking sweaty and nerdy, with their fans equally sweaty and nerdy. The 1979 footage is a bit botched by over-ly "arty" effects and twitchy angle shifts, but at least it sounds good. The '83 footage that fills 2 of the 3 DVDs covers both their final Boston shows. At these they look a bit cooler and more sure of themselves. But Roger Miller still looks pretty nerdy wearing rifle range ear protectors to try to keep his band-ending tinnitus from getting worse.

In this '83 footage, the Boston fans seem a bit confused by the band. Even this home town crowd didn't seem as if it really knew what to make of the group--- not quite punk, but shouty and aggressive, incorporating tape loops yet not wholly "experimental" because there are verses and choruses and plenty of melody. Their music falls into the very broad category of "indie rock" (which was just then emerging in the early 80s)--- but I guess the band was ahead of their time. For the Boston late show (21+) the front row just bobs their heads. There's not much visible singing along or enraptured audience gestures and only one or two stage dives.

This was the home coming show on their LAST TOUR (until the 2002 reformation) and the crowd knew this. Yet no one seems to lose their shit.

In the coming years, people would come to realize the greatness of Burma but "you don't know what you got til it's gone." We've now had 25 years to digest, study, and appreciate what Burma 1.0 left us. And if you could send some early 00s indie fans back in a time machine to Boston '83 they'd certainly lose their shit, sweatily singing along to every word....well at least I would.

And thankfully us early oh-oh-ers again have an opportunity to lose our shit and sweatily sing along. For the last five years, Mission of Burma has been back together with the nearly original line-up (the revered Bob Weston replaced Martin Swope on the loops) and the original energy and inspiration have been retained. They've released 2 more great albums, on par with the 80s material and can still put on a great show. It's inspiring that 50 year olds can perform new and old tunes that do justice to a legacy started nearly 30 years ago.

And if you want proof, here's a well recorded 2007 show that you can stream or download:
Mission of Burma in Atlanta, January 13th, 2007

And for two nights next month in NYC on the band will be present the whole Signals, Calls, and Marches EP (6/14) and Vs. (6/15) so you can almost build a successful time machine to the early 1980s

I'll be in NYC on June 15th, but unfortunately, I've already got tickets to see the equally amazing (yet totally different) time warp of Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden. Oh Lord why must I have to choose?

But back to 1983 and the issue of the original Burma fans NOT losing their shit: the band really didn't do too much outreach to get the fans riled up. There was no "we'll miss you, thanks for 4 years!" speeches. There's very little stage banter at all at these shows. But the band plays really well. And it seems just the music itself should've been enough to whip the kids into a frenzy.

A frenzy gets whipped up and frothy at the early, all-ages show. There are kids stage diving during every song. But the frenzy seems arbitrary. It seems disconnected from the music onstage. I get the feeling the kids heard there was a punk show at the Bradford and just came out to stage dive with no knowledge of who the band was.
This clip exemplifies the disconnection:



" Trem Two" is a slower tempo song that's melancholy in mood and probably the least likely candidate in the set for stage diving. And yet the kids end up on the stage in full-force and end up sort of awkwardly slow-dancing in front of the band.

And when "Peking Spring" gets kicked out, the kids don't seem to go nearly as nuts as they should if they were really up on Burma's music. To my ears, this song is a perfect synthesis of punk energy and singable melody. In all fairness, the song remained unreleased until after Burma's first demise. But still, there's a great groove-filled "woah-oh" section that is just calling out for a good old mosh and sing-along. And yet the audience isn't visibly moved.

I'm fully in support of people dancing around and knocking into each other when they "feel it." I'm certainly one to lose my shit and spin around crazily when I fall inside the music I love. But I also agree with Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and I despise "violence disguised as dancing." And McKaye's early band definitely attracted a lot of aggressive dance (as the Minor Threat live video/DVD, also from 1983, shows)


though that DC dance and mosh seemed more of a community event. The kids seemed a lot more connected to the actual songs and there was plenty of singing along.

I get the feeling that all the stage diving at the Burma show was just a display of rebellious machismo. With the exception of one girl, it's all dudes doing the diving. Sweaty, often shirtless dudes too. These divers are not holy. They look and act like the people who arbitrarily moshed, kickboxed, and stage dove at shows during the era of my own punk/hardcore/emo show-going (1998-2002ish.) And I have a feeling that meat heads just like this are still spewing their testosterone at shows in 2008.

At the Burma all-ages Boston finale I only noticed one stage diver singing along. He steps to the mic and joins in for one chorus of 'Revolver." Oh well. The crowd kinda takes away from the music instead of adding to it. Roger just smirks away as the kids dive and dive. For a while the white-shirted staff tries to keep the kids under control. And at one point two cops come out and stand menacingly at the front of the stage for part of a song, providing unintentional donutty comedy. But eventually the authorities give up and give in. The stage monitors are just moved to the side to save them from the fray. And the kids dive on.

The clips that are posted online are from early in the show before the wide-spread stage-diving starts. Still, near the beginning of the clip below security practically rips the shirt off of a diver in flight and at the end of the clip you can see the crew removing some of the stage monitors in anticipation of a continuing onslaught. And in this segment you also get a fine "Red" with Swope-ian sound effects:



The awkward band-crowd dynamic makes the DVDs not wholly satisfying. But over half this footage has never been released previously. And each hour-long DVD comes as a BONUS to a full album's worth of audio. The camera angles are also very good (for the '83 footage) and it's an honest uncut document. (yes, I feel like a saleman here, but really, MoB isn't giving me a cent for any of this and I honestly think your life will be improved by the inclusion of these discs in your collection.)

Perhaps the reissues were just a money-grab for these aging Bostonians. But I get the feeling that a whole lot of care was put into these sets. The photos and layouts look great in glossy 12x12. Paging through the booklet while one of these records spins on your turntable (with the tone arm tracking set properly to 1.5 grams of course) you get quite a wonderful experience. You get a satisfying audio/visual package missing from a lot of today's albums and mp3 releases.

572 words about Birds of Maya and Earth (May 5 2008)

I saw Kayo Dot, Birds of Maya, and Earth at Johnny Brenda's bar last night (May 5 2008) here in Philadelphia.

My experience during Birds of Maya's set was wonderful. They played beautiful heavy, fuzzy psych in the vein of early Sabbath. While they played, I closed my eyes and opened my mind to free associations across the blank black canvas of my lids.

Images built off of what I saw just before I closed my eyes. The images started with something in the room--- the shape of the singer/bassist hunched over his instrument or the arm of the person in front of me-- but with eyes closed and no outside visual stimulation for minutes on end, things morphed. My eyelids became a playground for my subconscious: images of my family's 1st home in Piscataway, NJ (1979-88), old lovers, abstract blobs.

All this came and went, shifting like a collage or a montage while I rocked back and forth with Birds of Maya's music washing over me. Every time someone accidentally bumped into me in passing, this trance, these visions would be broken. My eyes would open and I'd be rudely returned from the clouds and dropped back down into a Fishtown hipster bar.

At one point with my eyes open, I saw the singer/bassist crouched on the floor with his boom mike pushed down low and his bass propped up on his knee. I thought he'd been bowled over by the power of his band's own music , but after the set I learned from my friends that his guitar strap had simply broken, apparently while my eyes were closed, necessitating his awkward position.

BoM's set seemed to end too quickly. I think they actually played for 30-35 minutes, though it felt more like 20. But my perception was altered---- self-altered in a way, aided by good strong music.

As many of you know, I don't do drugs and I never have. But I like trying to experience something analogous to drugs through my own mental and sensory power. I like the idea of temporary "mind alteration." but I don't like the idea of the cost of drugs, the side effects, the possible physical and psychological addictions, the frequent injustice involved in their preparation, and the inability to "come down" at will when under the influence.

Drugs play off of the chemicals and circuitry already in place in the brain. I like seeing how far the brain can take itself just through internal and sensory stimuli. This seems to be a life-long experiment. And I take comfort knowing that I can come down nearly immediately if a situation around me requires a "level-headed" response.

Music doesn't always have such a powerful effect on me as it did last night. This was my 4th or 5th time seeing Birds of Maya and the first time I had a near-psychedelic experience. With my anxieties and racing thoughts it's infrequent that I can actually just let music wash over and have a drug-like effect on me. But I'm grateful that I CAN have this experience at all, without any "supplementary" substances, even if only happens occasionally.
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Here's a clip of Birds of Maya, also recorded at Johnny Brenda's, late in 2006. I think they also opened with this song at the show last night. This video is choppy (as if half the frames are dropped) giving the band the appearance of dancers beneath a strobe. But the blurry, altered natured of the visuals suggests the altered nature of my own colorful closed-lid experience as the band played.

And the fuzzy sound is pretty spot on document of how the band sounds live.



Though Birds of Maya was the unexpected highlight, Earth was the headliner.

Earth's set, which came all (or mostly) from their newest album, was dark and beautiful--- doomy, instrumental country played at a heavy-hitting molasses pace. But by the time Earth hit the stage, it was nearly midnight and I was very aware of my tired legs. This made it difficult to fully lose myself in the music.

The standout of their set was the closing piece. Guitarist/mastermind Dylan Carson announced (sans microphone) that it would be a bonus track on the upcoming vinyl release of the most recent Earth album ("And the Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull.) This bonus track had a jagged trombone(!) line and a glacial yet catchy guitar riff.

I'm glad I haven't bought the album yet and have just been tiding myself over with a pirate download. Now I will certainly hold out for next month's release of the (inevitably) beautifully-packaged LP edition.

Here are two clips of Earth from the European leg of their tour earlier this year. The pieces accurately characterize the dark yet slow and relaxing flavor of the band's set last night


This second clip is the trombone "LP bonus track" tune that I enjoyed so much:

994 words about an impromptu Patti Smith performance 4-15-08 at the Philly Film fest.

I wasn't expecting to see a Patti Smith concert on Tuesday night. But sure enough, I did. It was intimate, acoustic, and impassioned

Well, maybe "concert" gives the wrong idea. Patti Smith can easily perform an hour and half to two hours of songs, covers, and improvised poetic rants at one of her scheduled concerts. But this was just an impromptu few songs. It happened at the Prince Music Theatre as part of the closing-night festivities of the Philadelphia Film Fest. After a screening of the documentary film she did with Steven Sebring, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life" she came out and did a Q&A. And after the Q&A she said "well I might as well play a few songs."

Guitars and her guitarist-son, Jackson, were brought out. For me this was a bonus on top of a bonus on top of a bonus. I slept on getting tickets for the "Dream of Life" screening and it got sold out. But last week, a friend said she had an extra ticket and invited me to come along. Then at the theater, just before the film started, the emcee announced that Patti would be coming out after the screening for a Q&A. Apparently her Q&A appearance had already been announced, but since I wasn't following the Fest closely and it wasn't announced on Patti's website, I was ignorant. Once it was announced that Patti was in the building, I knew a performance of songs or poetry was a possibility but I wasn't really sure it was gonna happen until the guitars were brought out.

As Patti and Jackson came out there was a moment of discussion as they decided what to play. I shouted out for "Beneath the Southern Cross," my favorite of her acoustic songs. But my request went unheeded. Instead she refreshed Jackson on some chords and the they did "Grateful," a song that Patti had previously said was inspired by the smiling grey-bearded face of Jerry Garcia.

The venue and both of the Smiths on stage seemed only semi-prepared for the performance. The house lights were kept on and it didn't seem as if Jackson's guitar was mic'ed for the first song and Patti's guitar seemed slightly out of tune. And by her own admission Patti can't really play guitar despite having attacked one on stage from time to time for the last 30 years. But I enjoyed the ragged nature of it. After appearing larger than life on the big screen for two hours as part of a film that seemed to be aiming to increase the myth of Patti's mystical, goddess nature here she was just a hundred feet from me stumbling through a song with the child she had in the 1980s with Fred Smith (yes, Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5)



After the first song, I was hoping Patti would decide to honor my request for "Southern Cross," but then someone shouted out for "Because the Night." I groaned. It's undeniably a great song, but I think it's very over-played. Patti has dozens of great songs, but still "Because the Night" is the only song of hers that ever gets played on classic rock radio. It's her only hit single and it's the only song that the average non-fan knows (either through the original or the successful 10,000 Maniacs cover.) For such a rare, intimate performance , I was hoping for a rarely-played gem.
But "Because the Night" IS a great song, so I wasn't going to groan too much. And after checking with Jackson that he could actually play the song and acknowledging that the song was hard to pull off without drums, Patti launched into a near-definitive version of the song. Her voice, perhaps a bit tentative for the opening song, soared!
And the crowd took up the invitation to join her on the chorus. I felt a great feeling of community. The hardcore fans, the casual fans and the unknowing curious were united. Because everybody knows "....the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to lust." For a moment I shed my elitest super-fan attitude and was freshly swept up into the beauty of the song.



Patti then acknowledged the upcoming Pennsylvania primary and gave subtle support for the divisive Ralph Nader. Fittingly, she then launched into "People Have the Power" from the Dream of Life album. The song has a anthemic fist-in-the-air quality. It was relevent when she wrote it at the tail-end of Reaganism and it's still relevant at the tail-end of Bushist. The sentiment of the song seems a bit too dreamy and optimistic for my cynical "Darkly" self but every time I hear it live, I get swept up in the song.

The album version, ironically, lacks power. Its late-80s production is too smooth. It dilutes the raw righteous joyous anger of the piece. But on-stage the song really soars. The melody is simple enough to be carried effectively by a single acoustic guitar. The simple repetitive chorus lends itself to singing along. And "People Have the Power" sounds more POWER-ful when the People in their seats sing along.



And that was it. After 3 songs, the mini-concert was over. Patti simply walked off the stage through the crowd and out the door. I left feeling lifted.

Apparently Patti went to use the theater's public restrooms, just one of "the people" acting on universal necessity. Acting on that same urinous necessity, I passed Patti in the hallway. I was hoping she'd just get a few pats on the back with people saying "that was a great performance." But instead she immediately got surrounded by an autograph-hungry crowd wielding sharpies and LPs. She didn't seem enthusiastic. The bathroom hallway was a small space to start with. And with a starstruck mob it quickly turned into pure claustrophobia. Patti humored the crowd for a moment, signing a few things. She told people to back off and give her some space. I could see the anxiety in her eyes. Then she just gave up and with the help of her associates (friends? guards?) she pushed through the crowd and was gone.

It was a slight blemish on an otherwise wonderful event.

You probably noticed I didn't write anything yet about the actual documentary "Patti Smith: Dream of Life." And that's because the actual live performance was far and away the highlight of the evening. Steven Sebring's film was a documentary in the loosest sense. It was non-linear, non-chronological. It was a collage of performance, backstage, home, and travel footage spanning from Patti's mid 90s return to the stage and recording studio and onward to the mid 00s. I actually looked at my watch twice during the film, a sure sign that I found it less than enthralling.

I wanted a film that made Patti seem real. I wanted someting that got me inside Patti's head, and past the myth of her as a witchy mystic. But there was too much footage of her walking in graveyards and dancing in flowing dresses on beaches. It seemed more like an extended music video. It seemed like Patti acting out the narrators of all her songs. In grainy black and white, there was too much "art" and not enough "life."
I love Patti's art. That's why I have her poetry books, all her albums, and have seen her in concert 5 times. But the documentary, fitting to its title gave us just a dream of Patti and not enough of her real life.

There were a few really gratuitous moments that dragged. Towards the end, she and Flea (yes, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) were shown a beach playing trumpet and clarinet respectively. They then went on to exchanging awkward peeing stories.
Perhaps this was supposed to show her a a real, fluid-filled person. But it provided no insight and only a few cheap laughs.

Short of providing insight into her life, I'd hoped the film would at least include a lot of great performance footage. But there was surprisingly little of that. What was included was fragmented and interspersed with other sounds and scenes. The on truly great on-stage piece was a joyous excerpt of her and her band playing the feisty, controversial "Rock and Roll Nigger" during her first tour after 16 years. Everyone on stage was smiling and moshing with one another as they all huddled around the microphones shouting the song's chorus, "OUTSIDE of SOCIETY!"

The film's most sweetly insightful segment was of Patti with her parents in their humble South Jersey abode. Patti's mom said her favorite piece by her daughter was the "Horses/Gloria" medley. Patti's mom served burgers and coffee as she showed her collection of cow trinkets and she and Patti's dad talked about going to see their daughter perform at one of her sound checks at the Troc. Patti's mom (and maybe her dad now too) recently died and the segment was a candid tribute to a family that was earthy and "normal" but loving and highly supportive of their firebrand, arty, iconoclast daughter. Seeing Patti's parents at home made me think of my own normal yet very supportive parents in their own humble abode (also in New Jersey.)

I also enjoyed the inclusion of a few haunting clips of lo-fi home recordings of Patti and Fred "Sonic" Smith working on songs not long before his death.

The most overall moving, powerful part of the documentary was the audio of Patti performing the Declaration of Independence. She read the document, which seems eerily fitting for current times under the tyrannical rule of another George. And this reading morphed into her direct indictment of Bush's crimes against the environment, war crimes, crimes against civil liberties, and crimes against flooded New Orleans. Different points of this indictment got loud cheers from different sections of the crowd.

When I saw Patti perform at UPENN in the Fall of 2003, she performed a segueing "medley" of the Declaration>Indictment of Bush>People Have the Power that got me all riled up, cheering, and singing along with my fist in the air. And hearing it again as part of the film was nearly as powerful.

Here's the one clip of the documentary that I could find on youtube. It's not particular insightful and in that way it's sort of representative of the film.



Also, for anyone looking to recreate the experience of my evening as closely as possible. Here's the nearly complete Q&A session with Steven Sebring and Patti Smith.

part 1:


part 2: