3.26.2014

Ono Part II

So even though I posted a huge long thing yesterday about Ono on Frontier Psychiatrist, I have even more scans that they gave me I wanted to share.These are a bit more wordy (reviews / previews of shows), including the Reader article I mentioned, so I didn't want to add them on a piece already as long as it was. These are for the intense fans. Enjoy.

Review of Machines That Kill People in Aeon Magazine


Review by Scott Michaelson in the Chicago Reader, July 1983

...this review is currently not in the Chicago Reader online archives.

Review in Matter Magazine

The following is...well I'm really not quite sure what's going on. The cover of this newspaper says "Pavilion for the Arts, ltd. presents Robert A Fischer's THE JADED DRAGON (A Kah-Boo-Key Event in 5 Acts)." So take that as you will. It happened at the Germania Club on Saturday October 29th, 1983. 




Order form for Kate Cincinnati cassette, with original calligraphy by Travis


3.25.2014

The State

The State is one the most important television shows made in the America. It's absurd, it breaks the fourth wall, it's a combination of high-brow and low-brow, culturally- and self-aware, and along with Mr. Show, the closest thing that has ever matched the greatness of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

But perhaps most importantly, the theme song of the show is great, perhaps only second to Shadowy Men On a Shadowy Planet's "Having an Average Weekend" used on Kids in the Hall. The song is by Craig Wedren of Shudder To Think and Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys, based around samples from two Nation of Ulysses songs, an unsung hero of a band that seems all but forgotten.

In a sense Nation of Ulysses were a musical equivalent of the State. The loud, fast, and angry motif was countered by insightful and often humorous lyrics about both politics and relationships, not unexpected from a Dischord band. Likewise, their no-wave influence and philosophy regarding fashion was different from conventional punk ideology, as much of the State contradicted what had been done with humor at that point in time. In a time when both music isn't angry enough and comedy isn't funny enough, both The State and Nation of Ulysses deserve our attention again. 

Embedding is disabled, so click here for a sketch from The State. Listen to the two songs that were sampled from for the theme below and get angry.






Now listen to one of the most important albums of the early 90s.


3.24.2014

A Band Called Death

Finally got around to watching this documentary about proto-punkers Death from Detroit. I had never heard of them before, and though they existed in the mid 70s, really no one in the world had heard of them until the late 2000s.

The band was three African-American brothers (Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney), that made loud, fast, and angry music, before the Ramones, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols popularized the sound. Death was inspired by the Who and Alice Cooper, yet went faster, harder, and with more attitude. After no support in Detroit, the band moved to Vermont, still finding resistance and no audience.

Yet, through a string of bizarrely random circumstances, primarily Robert Manis (of Moniker Records) buying their single for $800 on EBay and plugging them to Drag City to reissue their material, the band has finally found their audience. The documentary is full of great memorabilia from the band and is quite touching. Only two of the brothers are still alive (as well as a fourth brother that wasn't in the band), and they are still so full of life and love, and certainly with a new found appreciation for their new found audience.

The only thing that was missing from the documentary was their thoughts on the punk scene that followed them (and was ignorant of them). Firstly, there's no mention of fellow Detroit noise makers MC5 and the Stooges and if they had an influence on the band at all. Likewise, there's no mention of their opinions of the Ramones and all these NYC and London bands with a similar sound getting record deals. The only meaning I can surmise about this absence is that they just weren't concerned with any of it. Two of the members formed a reggae band in the 90s. They started families, which they said was the most important things in their lives. They were all very religious as well, not a hot seller in the punk scene (one of the few reviews of the band wrote the headline “Rock ‘n’ Roll Please, and Hold the Religion”).

In the documentary, the brothers are super humble, and never bitter. It's amazing that they made such powerful music, visionary as it was, left to the obscurity of a few 45" bins for decades. I had the same thought as Henry Rollins did in the doc: this is why we go to record stores and take chances on things we've never heard of before. I know I've discovered more amazing music by taking chances on obscure records than I have from superflous PR emails that avalanche my email inbox every day. 

Next chance I get, I'm picking up this record. In the meantime, here it is on Youtube:




And look for Rough Francis, a band featuring the three sons of bassist Bobby Hackney, who make original music as well as pay tribute to Death at every show. 

3.20.2014

Richard Hell - "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp"

I was more than excited to finally read Richard Hell's autobiography. If you're not familiar with Hell, hit play on this video first before reading.



Blank Generation has been one of my favorite albums since I first listened to it sophomore year of high school. I thought it was better than anything else his contemporaries were doing at CBGBs, and even better than the Velvets and Stooges before him. It combined a feral physical nature with intellectual wit and humor, in the lyrics and in the compositions. It's the perfect album for a hormone-addled teenager: music about sex and art made by drug addicts.

Somehow, the Glenview Public Library had a copy of Go Now, a novel Hell wrote in 1996, briefly mentioned in his autobiography. I remember being underwhelmed, and feeling like it was an On the Road ripoff (though I also devoured it). Unfortunately, I feel the same way here. Looking at reviews on Goodreads, a lot of people feel the same. He spends too much time on describing apartments he lived in only briefly, that it was a 3.5 star book, that moments of brilliance are overshadowed by half-baked prose, unnessecary tangents, and not expanding on stuff that he could have shed more insight on.

In high school, I read Please Kill Me three times. It remains one of my favorite books, and is an amazing oral history of the punk scene. So it was sorta disappointing to read a lot of the same stuff again and even some things that are almost line-for-line the same. I had hoped for more of Hell's post punk rock life when he was writing more, but he addresses his reasons for not doing this as the life of a writer isn't that interesting, difficutly in describing present day situations frankly blah blah blah. We want to read you, Hell, because we know you are fearless! Give that to us again.

And yet, I can't hate this book entirely. There are in fact some great anecdotes from the CBGBs days, and he has great descriptions of people like Lester Bangs, Dee Dee Ramone, Anya Phillips, and more, and when his poetry sticks out, it sticks out ("Everything that happened to her was weather," describing a girlfriend), but too often it feels like Hell is cashing in; the book is double spaced with blank pages between chapters, like he was just trying to get to a specified length and then call it a day.

It's not all bad. If nothing else, it's got me excited about that scene again, and what's come out of it. I'm rediscovering some LPs, like Robert Quine (Hell's guitarist) and Fred Maher's album Basic. Quine was a great and underrated guitarist, as angry as they come and with a unique style all his own. Check out 'Summer Storm' from that album:



For those interested in CBGBs scene, I'd recommend going with Please Kill Me. For those that want more of a personal account, read Patti Smith's Just Kids. For those that can't get enough (like me), go for I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp.

3.14.2014

Song of the Day: Plastic Crimewave Sound - "End of Cloud"

About a month ago, I stumbled across a split between Oneida and Plastic Crimewave Sound at Reckless. Because I suck, I've only today listened to it for the first time. PCS's side consists of one 19 minute track of propulsive drums, chanting, feedback, and overall psychedelic mind-melting (and I say that fully aware of the hyperbole). It's good and it's on youtube. Turn it up loud:


A Note on "Tuesday, Nearly Midnight"

This post is in reference to the previous post, which you can see by easily scrolling down, or easily clicking here

Yes, I recognize the dehumanizing aspect of calling some of my characters Bum 1, Bum 2, and Urine (as opposed to the more humanizing name for Portia, her real name, or at least the name she gave me). I did not have any direct contact with these fellas, and was really just an unintentional (and non-judgmental) observer but wanted to differentiate them from each other somehow. I wrote that post, because it was just something that struck me (stories about homeless or "crazy" people on the El are nothing new, and I'm certain I've experienced more bizarre situations) and I wanted to share the story of these three men and their brief interaction.

Homelessness is an issue I think often about. When I was younger and went to Comiskey or the United Center, I always wanted my dad to give money to the homeless people, especially the street musicians, the bucket drummers and sax players playing da da da daaaaa da HEY! and the like. If I had a couple quarters in my pocket, I would always throw it their way. When I wanted to be a pro athlete (age six or so), I thought how one day I would be rich and be able to give all these guys money. It's an easy pipe dream as you get into your dad's luxury car, fall asleep on 90/94, and arrive safely back in the garage of a Glenview home.

Little did I know until I'd grown up a bit 1) how much of an epidemic homelessness is 2) how shitty it feels to play on the street and be perpetually ignored.

I can't tell you what the three guys on the train do with their lives. Myself, like society, continue to marginalize them as outcasts, people not worthy of knowing. But, granted, if three coked-out financial businessmen were on the train, I'd call them Suit 1, Suit 2, and Sniffles. Is that just train society? I remember in a Freshman year writing course in college we had to write an ethnography of a specific place. This involved visiting the same location a few times, making observations, interviewing people, and writing about it. An example of a previous student's work our teacher gave us involved the Red Line. The writer of that paper concluded how no one likes to talk to anyone else on the train, how we just get holed up in our own little worlds with iPods or reading material and ignore the actual lives of people and THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING around us. Is that inherent to train culture though? Do I need to know about every stranger I pass by? Generally, I'm introverted. I don't like talking to people I know if it's avoidable sometimes.

I know this turned from a note to a ramble. I guess I'm just done with the train this winter and need the weather to get nicer so I can get back on my bike. I'm not sure my heart can take being on the train; I'll start giving everyone a quarter and pat myself on the back for being a good liberal, though neither of us will be better off.

3.13.2014

Tuesday, Nearly Midnight (Keep Chicago Weird)

Via Calumet 412

On the Green Line two men get on, I don't remember where. Somewhere past Central, heading downtown from the West Side. It might've been Laramie. They both sit in the aisle facing seats, one directly across from me, the other three seats to his right. One of them had a red, personal grocery-cart you only see old ladies, college kids in the South Loop, and bums with. A man that smelled like urine had already sat down next to me; we'd both of us got on at Harlem. Sadly, a man on the train who looks dirty and smells like piss is barely enough for me to think about; I kept my head buried in my book. City livin'.

So these two new men get on. The one that's across from me starts talking about someone who was hit by a train at 35th in Bronzeville. Then another was hit and killed on the West Side. When's he's not talking, he's snorting. He's trying to remember when it happened. Six, maybe five, four in the morning? More like 3 AM, he finally decided. The Green Line doesn't run that late, his friend said. After a minute of silence, he realized his faux pas. "I wasn't trying to contradict you," but Bum 1 turns away. He took out a pack of cigarettes. I think he was using the papers to roll a joint but I was engrossed in this book or at least tried to look like I was and make myself part of the background (as I typed all of this on my phone on the Blue Line a little while later, someone else has begun smoking cigarettes). 

Bum 2 turns to the urine soaked dude. "My man. We got the same hat." It was a black beanie apparently with a Nike logo . "Black folks don't wear this," he said. "Only white folks and Europeans. I got mine for 38.65. Almost 40 bucks I paid for this hat. Tell you what, jack. I'll buy yours offa you. Ten bucks?"
Urine offers a mumble-laugh. "You said it was almost 40."
 "15, man, I'll give you 15 for the hat." No response.
"25." Nothing.
"30." Nothing.
"35. Man, I'll give you 40." He keeps going til 50 and he still won't give up the hat. Meanwhile Bum 1 starts nodding off. Bum 2 does the same before waking up again. "I was just messing with you, man," he revealed to Urine, before giving some sound economic advice. "But if anyone ever offers you 50 bucks for a hat again, I don't care, you take it. You hear me?"

By the time I'm at Clark and Lake and close my book, all three of them are nodding off, like three tramps at the end of the first act in a Samuel Beckett play. Could you imagine the stories Beckett would write if he lived on the West Side of Chicago?

3.12.2014

Poems About Bars: The Whistler (11.01.11)

I only write poetry about bars. This is from a few years ago. I think it's about Mike Reed.

via Food Republic

'The Whistler (11.01.11)'


The fern stood next to the doorman
Who takes a break from his book to check an ID

The drumsticks clacked the rim
                The sax was strangling the bass

                Cocktails
Candlight
                Wood
Leather
                Brick
Curtains

The candle flickered like a Parkinsons’d limb
                His right elbow was dancing
It is only a trick of the light
                It is only a trick of the music

3.07.2014

Literary Chicago: Toni Morrison, 'Sula'

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.


"...Then he leaned forward and whispered into the ear of the woman in the green dress. She was still for a moment and then threw back her head and laughed. A high-pitched big-city laugh that reminded Eva of Chicago. It hit her like a sledge hammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest."

via Calumet 412
pg. 31, Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)

3.06.2014

Montezuma's Revenge (Summer 2013)

Last summer after getting sick in Mexico City, I spent a few days in NYC ignoring how sick I was. I wrote this on the airplane ride from NYC to Boston, where I never really got any better. I didn't scribble as many notes then, but perhaps I'll make a part two to this. Since I have a cold today, this seems like the perfect time to post this.


Find three friends. Go to Mexico City. Eat street food. Ride bikes. Eat street food. Say goodbye to Craig. Be jealous of him three days later (later you find out his fate was the same). Go to the 17th best restaurant in the world. Drink Mexican wine. Eat ants. Get drunk. 

Wake up the next morning. Urinate. Defecate. Get a cappuccino. Get a bagel. Yes, a bagel. Plan your day. Defecate. Defacate. 

“Shit.”

Enjoy room service for your last meal in Mexico City. Watch Argo. Watch Ted. Sleep on and off; never reach REM state. Read the Wikipedia page for “Montezuma’s Revenge”.

Go to the airport. Eat a banana. Relax. Feel better. Run through DFW. Sweat; but make the connecting flight. Land in LGA and patiently, but frustratedly wait for your luggage which is on the next flight. Arrive at friend’s place in Bushwick. Wait for him. Listen to Saves the Day. Andy comes home; trade stories. Pass out 

and sleep in. Feel better. Go out. Get coffee. Go to a beer garden. Play bocce. Drink a beer. Talk with friends. Talk about music and writing and music writing. Drink more beer. Eat a slice. Smile, laugh. Go to the park. Meet more friends, drink more beer. Eat tacos. 

Regret those tacos.

3.04.2014

Michael Robbins, 'Alien Vs. Predator'

I finally got around to reading Michael Robbins' poetry collection, 'Alien Vs. Predator'. I'm familiar with Robbins who taught a class I took on Romantic Poetry four years ago at Columbia. He knew a fuckton about poetry, as well as hip-hop and metal; he looked like a guy that would know a fuckton more about poetry than he did hip-hop and metal.

His own poetry is quite absurd. Lots of plays on words, lots of contemporary cultural references, philosophical references, poetic references...you get the idea. The poems are very abstract, in the sense that you shouldn't expect to read a poem and come away with any cohesive sense of what you just read.

Overall, I enjoyed the collection. I don't read a lot of poetry, but I'm sure I would read more of it if I knew more people that wrote like this. It was fun to read, and fun to read out loud and I found myself laughing while reading more than anything in quite some time. I decided to take some of my favorite lines, and rearrange them into a new poem. Since I could never write a poem that referenced Sartre, Star Wars, Joy Division, Freud, and David Bowie, I'm letting Robbins do it for me. If you're intrigued by these lines, check out some of Robbins' unbastardized work on the Poetry Foundation's website and follow him on twitter. Looking forward to another collection set to be released later this year. 


'Ode to AVP'

If hell, like Soylent Green, is people,
every little hermit is the one true God.
She's not the droid you're looking for.
This baby is disgusting. Fuck you, baby.

Hold me close, tiny reindeer.
I get my news from Meerkat Manor
I think I left my uterus in your uterus
Please don't get me started on astronauts.

I measure my pleasure in AMBER Alerts.
Let's put the Christ back in Xbox
by licking the nun and kicking her habit,
the elephant of surprise.

You shouldn't drink diarrhea
unless you bring enough for everybody.
Life is but the interpretation of a dream.
Gently, gently down the drain.

This is Uncle Tom to Ground Control.
Love will tear us a new asshole.
Now I'm required
to register as a sex pretender.

The business school has softer
toilet paper, so I do my business there.
Sing "Crimson and Clover" over and overy
to the dollar dollar bill and yes yes y'all.

3.03.2014

Netherfriends

Anyone who follows me on social media already has seen me post a bunch about Netherfriends, but what the hell, why not one more?

I probably met Shawn Rosenblatt, sole member of the band, sometime at Columbia College when we both attended, though we didn't really know each other until I interviewed first in 2010 (I interviewed him again last year as well). I've since seen him play with a band and solo, in bars and basements, and in various states of inebriation (myself that is, although probably him too). I took this video of him at Subterranean, a show which I borrowed a friend's van to drive Shawn to after his was stolen.

Now, he's released his newest album P3ACE (pronounced "Three Peace"). It's got hip-hop beats, looping guitar and keys, and some of the catchiest hooks you'll hear this year. It's more than worth your time, and odds are if you're reading this, you've already heard it. If not, click below: