It’s that time of year again. March Madness. Only I’m not talking basketball, I’m talking about SXSW. I used to dream about going down for it but now I find the whole thing overwhelming. Instead, I keep my eyes and ears open for new (to me) stuff thanks to the music press that are all down there doing the leg work.
For months I will see announcements about what bands have been added to the line up but as much as I try, I simply don’t have the time between work, a long commute, and stuff at home, to know what many of these bands sound like. The NPR Austin 100 list is a good place for me to start. That’s how I came to find The Can’t Tells and this track “No Television.”
I picked this one for the title of the song because we have no television in our house. We have a tv, a new one even, and we have a Blu-ray player and a Roku box with Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc., but we don’t have cable, satellite, or over the air television. Yesterday I tried to change that by buying a digital antenna that my online research lead me to believe might be able to get a couple of PBS stations and maybe a major network or two. Sadly, I got four home shopping channels, the ION Life station, and Qubo. Unless the customer service rep will be able to help me find the right position for this thing later this evening (via the phone) then I’m taking it back.
I don’t usually miss broadcast tv all that much but it’s nice to be able to watch the weather and for live events. For example, I couldn’t watch the Oscars last night and I felt like the only person on Twitter who wasn’t tuned in. That’s not a problem but I do end up feeling a little out of sync with the rest of society. In keeping with my lack of video content, I went with the SoundCloud rather than YouTube version. If you like what you hear, they’ve got the whole album streaming on their SoundCloud channel.
Today I found out about the Amtrak Residencies for writers. I can’t tell you how perfect that is. I might cry. Right now I am listening to the train tape I made in college (the digital edition on my iPod) and I can see the backyards of America in my head, obscured now and then by the blur of greenery; interrupted by the occasional overpass. I always thought that would make an excellent anthropology thesis, America’s Backyards as Seen from the Train. That’s where the truth hangs out. The discarded bicycles, rusted red wagons, trampolines, and clotheslines.
Close by the cities, the scenery is much more industrial. Warehouses. Graffiti covered brick buildings and cement walls. Trenton Makes The World Takes. The cities give way to the suburbs, where the backyards and cemeteries make up the scenery. Depending on what train you’re taking, you might get far enough away from the built up areas to see more traditionally scenic views. I always try to sit on the right side of the train in a window seat. If you always sit on the right, you’ll see what’s on the left on your way back.
I love everything about train travel. I love the big, beautiful, historic stations. I love the smells of the engine, some kind of weird mix of diesel and electric, hot and metallic. I love the rhythm of the train swaying gently as it clatters along the tracks. I love the tracks! I have two rusted and discarded old railroad spikes saved in a bin. I have several Amtrak train ticket stubs saved alongside concert tickets. I love leaning my head against the window and trying to find a spot to put your feet that gives you just the right amount of ‘please don’t talk to me’ body language or trying to sit in such a way as to invite a little conversation. I love watching my fellow passengers, listening to them chat with their seatmate or talk with their children about what’s passing by the window. I like to sneak a peak at the book they’re reading. Watching as people meet them when they get off the train, and others saying goodbye as someone gets on.
I have taken the train as far north as Montreal, as far south as Georgia. The Adirondack. Southern Crescent. Overnight trains. Commuter trains. Sightseeing trains. Subways. I’ve been to Zoo Station. Paddington Station. Two of my proudest foreign language moments were giving directions to Salzburg’s train station in German and confirming in Czech that someone was waiting for the correct subway train in Prague. The only Czech words I can still remember are the words for beer and ‘next stop’ which is what they would announce as the subway pulled into every station.
It is hands down my favorite mode of travel. It’s not the fastest, there are usually delays on the line somewhere, but when I take the train, at least half the reason is just being on the train. It’s not the most convenient, being at the mercy of someone else’s schedule. A few years ago, Amtrak started running a train up to Maine, the Downeaster. I am dying to take that train. In order to get the train from my house to my mother’s house up in Maine would involve me getting on a train when it’s still dark in the morning and switching stations in Boston. It would take more time than driving but I’m actually contemplating buying a used car up near my mother just so I have an excuse to make that trip.
There is just something about the train that brings up all kinds of emotions for me. It’s like I feel a tiny shred of what everyone else in my car is feeling. Some people are excited, some are sad, some are hopeful, some are worried, some are exhausted, some can’t sit still. I know all those feelings and have, at different times in my life, been one of those people sitting there. So now I look around and see me on my first solo train trip, me going to visit a sister or a friend, me with my best friend on an adventure, me trying to hold it together when things aren’t working out, me on my way to a job interview, me seeing new places and remembering all my old favorite haunts. I don’t get that from any other form of travel.
This is the fourth song on the train tape. My vinyl copy of this song has a longer finger-snapping intro. I really wanted to use this version but I couldn’t get it to only play the first part.
Last week I went to see Lee Ranaldo and the Dust, which I highly recommend if they come to your area. It was a small place, tickets were only $15, can’t go wrong. Toward the end of the show they played Fragile off of Wire’s album Pink Flag. (It sounded about like this, if you’re curious.)
Pink Flag is such a great album. 21 tracks in just about 35 minutes. Hugely influential. Since I bought my copy when I was in college it’s a record, and although my turntable works just fine, you can only use it if you do not move. Not even a tiny bit. The house is more than 150 years old and the floors all creak and bend when you take a step so even someone walking in a different part of the house will cause the needle to skip. It’s not an album I can sit still while listening to.
A month or two ago I found a copy of the CD at the library. I listened to it just about every day of the three weeks I was allowed to have it out on loan. Especially in the car. It’s hard to pick a favorite track but I kept hitting repeat on Ex Lion Tamer. I just love the way he sings, “Fish fingers all in a line.”
I had a very bicycle-themed Christmas this year, which is a little strange since none of the people who gave me these bicycle items know that this fall I tried to resurrect my old red bike and get back into riding shape. It’s a pretty easy bet that I would like any bicycle related thing though, so I was happy and appreciative.
I got little metal bicycle earrings, a set of four small juice glasses with different bikes on them, a book, and a 500-piece puzzle with pictures of a dozen or so bicycles. It sort of feels like a sign. I guess I might just have to try a spin class.
I think I would really like spinning IF I could bring my own music and not have someone shout at me when I should pedal faster, or whatever it is they do that makes this a group activity. There’s that too. I would prefer to be by myself. Just me, the open road, the tunes in my ears. When I lived in DC, I often rode my bike to work. We had this intern from Germany at our office who was about my age and he’d bought a bike too. People thought we would make a cute couple, and we were good friends, but as he once said to someone who suggested it, “we can barely cycle together.”
I have never liked exercising but bike riding was never about the physical fitness aspect, it was always a much more elusive feeling that I’m not sure I can explain. It’s sort of being at one with the bike. You and this two-wheeled metal frame, rocketing through the landscape, it’s damn near close to flying. You have those slow sloggy moments too when you notice the little details of your surroundings while trying not to look too pathetic as a runner passes you on the uphill. That has only happened to me once but I remember it vividly and I’m pretty sure I could call upon that memory in a darkened spin room when I need a little motivation.
A good playlist is always essential. In college I made a tape synced for my bike route so I had just the right sort of beat and inspiration on different spots along the way. I have recreated it as best I could for my iPod, and it’s not bad, but it was made for that specific 17-mile stretch and it doesn’t work as well on my current streets. This song might be a good biking song. It has a certain lost-in-the-moment feeling to it. The fact that it echoes New Order at the 3:38 mark is ok, I love New Order. I can almost see the green leaves whizzing by now. I just have to wait a good five months for that to be a reality. If I hit the gym this winter, maybe I’ll actually be able to pull it off.
Here we are, back to Eastern Standard Time. Boo. Hiss. Bah humbug.
I hate this day. So many people just adore the day we set the clocks back because they think they gain an hour of sleep. Unless you are a childless person who has to set the alarm and be at work somewhere early Sunday morning then no, you do not get an extra hour of sleep. You wake up at whatever time you would wake up and, if you’ve set your clock back before you go to bed, it is whatever time it says it is.
What you lost, however, is an hour of daylight at the end of the day. I guess if you live significantly farther south or at the western edge of your time zone, this isn’t such a big deal. Here in New England we are at the eastern edge of the time zone and from now until after the winter solstice, it’s all down hill. Let’s weigh it up. One hour of sleep, if you actually woke up, looked at the clock and said, “Oh good, I can sleep for another hour!” and then successfully fell back asleep on this one Sunday, or plunging darkness at the end of the work day for the next two to three months. Hmmm.
Overly dramatic, maybe. I think I have undiagnosed (because I’ve never done anything other than bitch about the darkness) Seasonal Affective Disorder and my office is a windowless interior space so to leave at the end of the day and have it already be dark, just depresses the life out of me.
I went to the grocery store late this afternoon and the clouds that had covered the sky for much of the day were breaking apart with the last rays of the sun lighting them up with amazing colors. I stopped to take a picture. It was 4:44 p.m.
The sky at 4:44 p.m. on November 3, 2013
Pretty. But I would find it much prettier if it had been more like 7 p.m. If only we could spring forward in March and then never fall back.
Though this song (and this video version) is from Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss album, I first heard it in Wim Wenders’ film Until the End of the World. I loved that movie. I was living in DC when it came out and between its initial release and the extended showings at a bunch of second run movie theaters in the city, I probably saw it about five times. It had such a great soundtrack too, which I snapped up as soon as I found it. The version on the soundtrack has an intro that’s missing here but I fired it up in the car this morning as I had a little Lou Reed tribute on my drive to work.
I only saw Lou Reed once, on tour for his New York album. The Feelies opened up the show at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia. I remember when Lou and his band came out, he said they would be playing the whole album, in order, start to finish, so don’t bother yelling out any song titles. That was kind of unexpected for me but I figured, hey, it’s Lou Reed. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.
I have a number (4) of old bikes and I will not part with any of them. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a good place to store them so they’re mostly sitting in our basement, which is far from an ideal solution. About a month ago I decided to haul one of them out of there and bring it out into the light of day to clean it up. I thought that went pretty well so I took it out for a test spin and felt all wobbly and very unsteady. I moved the seat down a tiny bit and that helped a little but it bothered me that I wasn’t able to get right back in the saddle as if 20-odd years hadn’t passed since I was last riding it regularly.
My old red Univega
This bike and I have a lot of history. I got it the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college (coincidentally, the bike it replaced was a five speed version of the green Schwinn being ridden in this video by the guy with the mustache) and during the next three years, we were inseparable. I rode it all over the back roads of the Philadelphia suburbs in college. I rode it in two team triathlons, both times being the only female rider. This was the bike I rode when I was a bike messenger in Philadelphia during the summer of 1988.
I’m sure it’s nostalgia, or maybe a mid-life crisis, but I want to get the old red bike back into regular riding condition. I took it out yesterday for only the second time since cleaning it up. I fired up my old biking tape (transferred to my iPod) and headed out. Being out riding again felt great. I decided to swing past the bike shop while I was out because it definitely needs more work still and I wanted to know if it was actually worth it to pursue that before I spend any money on it.
I don’t have bike shorts anymore, I couldn’t find my old (really old, pre-clipless pedal Detto Pietros) biking shoes, so I wasn’t surprised by the amused looks I got when I rolled into the bike shop in my running gear on a 27-year-old bike whose handlebar tape was tied at the end to keep it from unraveling more. I told them I was thinking about maybe putting a different style of handlebar on it or something because it really wasn’t all that comfortable but maybe it actually isn’t the right size for me, or it’s not worth it because it’s too old, etc. A young guy working behind the counter came forward and said maybe it just needed to be adjusted a little and why didn’t I bring it outside and ride around in the parking lot so he could see how it fit me.
Maybe he was just humoring me but he seemed to think my bike was charmingly old school, not just old. He thought the cloth handlebar tape was really cool. He did describe my old toe clips as death pedals and he thought the tires probably need to be replaced. He suggested lifting the handlebars up a tiny bit and tilting them slightly to take the pressure off my wrists. While he did that he wrapped the cloth around the handlebars again and put caps on the end and sealed it with tape. He inched the saddle back up, added air to the tires and had me ride around again. It did feel better. It felt springy and like it really appreciated having someone treat it right. The young guy waved me off to enjoy my ride home, which I did.
I was trying to come up with the right song for this entry and something said to me, try Valley Lodge. I recently went to a reading and book signing by Dave Hill (he’s the guy in the biking cap, I have a really great one of those too from 1987) but he didn’t mention that they’d made a video for a song off their new album Use Your Weapons, riding old bikes and old school cycling gear. It’s the perfect video for this. I highly recommend his book Tasteful Nudes too.
I read the article about King Krule in the most recent New Yorker and thought, huh, maybe I’d better give that another listen. I remember looking him up a couple weeks ago. I don’t know what song it might have been but it didn’t leave a lasting impression.
Now I am looking at this kid and thinking, whoa. First of all, he just turned 19. I am old enough to be his mother, and not just his unwed, teen-aged mother either. The article said he wrote this song when he was 13. Thirteen! My claim to fame at age 13? Winning the shop award in eighth grade. Sure, knowing how to swap out a faucet and install new light switches has come in handy over the years but kind of pales in comparison to this song.
There were quite a few more that I really liked, some under his former name Zoo Kid, like Out Getting Ribs. It’s a bit weird for me to have a musician be this young and be something I would like and my 12-year-old daughter would not like at all.
Raise your hand if you remember the old 9:30 Club at 930 F St. N.W. in Washington, D.C. I lived in DC from 1991-1994 and I spent many, many nights there. I loved that dark, smelly hole in the wall. I’ve been to the new 9:30 Club at least once, maybe twice, and in many respects it’s a better club, but it will never take the place of the old club in my heart. The list of bands I saw play there is long and varied but when I tried to find a video from any of those shows to use here, I struck out. I contemplated using any one of the videos from inside the club I did find just to illustrate a point but I went with this version of 9-9 instead since today is 9-9 and it was recorded there, just audio only.
The point I wanted to make was about the ubiquity of cell phone cameras at shows these days. Back in June I went to see the Joy Formidable at a club and there were more people filming the show than there were dancing. When the person most likely to try and get a pit going is the 45-year-old mother of two kids (that’s me) and not the dozens of 20-something-year-old guys, you’re doing it wrong. I suppose to each their own and maybe they’ll enjoy their crappy cell phone videos with people singing along loudly and off key, but I’d rather dance.
Now, I’m not a Luddite and I have been known to grab a quick picture at most of the shows I’ve been to since getting a smart phone. Usually in between songs and just a still, not video, and mostly because I don’t want to be trying to get some great video when I could be dancing or paying attention and just being in the moment. But of all the annoying concert behaviors out there, I find the constant filming to be far less intrusive* than the drunken bros hollering stupid comments or the amount of talking taking place when the band, that we’ve all paid money to come see, is playing. Those drive me much more crazy than someone watching the show through a 4″ screen instead of the real life thing in front of them. I just feel like those people are missing out.
At first the filming really bothered me. But how many shows have I been to since this trend took off where I went online the next day to try and find videos of the show? Quite a few. And didn’t I just download the whole mp3 set from the Replacements first reunion show in Toronto and watch the videos people posted from there? You bet I did. I don’t want to be taking those videos myself, and lots of the ones you find are just awful and not worth watching because your own view was better, or the person holding the camera is shouting and singing and ugh. But I do so love having some live footage to be able to go back to if it’s done well.
Which is where the old 9:30 Club comes in. If you want to see some footage from inside the old 9:30 Club, just look up any live video of the mid-80s DC hardcore bands like Minor Threat, and you’ll find some. Most of the old footage you find will be taken from the video camera that someone used to operate up on top of this pole in the middle of the floor. There were these pillars placed in really inconvenient spots, architecturally holding up the building no doubt but when you were in the mosh pit, you had to be mindful of where they were. Some employee would get hoisted up into the crow’s nest spot on the top of that pole with a video camera and shoot the whole show. I’ve heard conflicting reports of what became of those tapes. One was that they just had it on closed circuit as it played what was happening on stage to small tv sets in the back bar and downstairs and there weren’t tapes of every show. The other was that they all burned in a fire at a house where they’d been stored after the club moved up to V St. Either way, the ones that made it to YouTube are rare, rare videos, and a real treasure. I always thought that would have been a cool second job but in reality the poor person up there was probably close to passing out every night as smoking was still allowed and it was easily 100 degrees or more at that height on some nights.
Here’s what I would love to see become the norm at clubs and concert halls. People could take a couple of pictures here and there, sure. But if the club could film it, from some unobstructed spot like they did at the old 9:30 Club, then make that available somehow, maybe people would go back to enjoying the show in person. I don’t know how you could work it out so no one is short changing the bands**, and I’d like for it to still be something special, that you were really there and not just watching the video of it. I have a fair number of old bootleg audio tapes from shows back in the day. Some I acquired just because they were offered to me but the ones I really loved were the ones of shows I’d been to. And if there were video from a couple of those shows? I would give a lot of things for video clips from a handful of those shows. A whole lot.
* I’m on the short side and I like to get as close to the front in a GA setting as possible so I can see the band and not just some big guy’s back. For the most part, I haven’t had my view obstructed by hundreds of cameras held aloft just because I’ve put myself where that’s not much of a problem. If I ran a club, I’d want a sloped floor so that the short girls can still see farther back (the TLA in Philadelphia is like this as it was a movie theater before – I saw movies there in college – and when they ripped out the seats to turn it into a club, they kept the sloped floor). Ideally I’d relegate people who insist on filming to the sides, maybe up on a slightly raised floor, out of the way of the people who really want to dance/watch/listen. And people who take pictures of themselves with their friends and the stage in the background? They are just losers.
** One thought was maybe it could be made available after the tour ended so as to not give the whole thing away or give people a reason to not pay to see the show in person. For me any video is never going to be as good as being there and even when I’ve seen a stream of a concert while it’s taking place (like Coachella, 12-12-12, etc.), it’s not even close to the experience of seeing it live. That said, this exists and it’s so freaking incredible.
One of the things I think of when I hear this song is how much Bobby Hackney’s sons would have been freaking out the first time they heard it. Can you imagine being a college-aged kid and suddenly finding out your father and uncles had played in a punk band in the early 70s? That the men in your family that you knew had a reggae band in their free time had once been rocking out this hard? I’m telling you, my mind would be blown.
I finally got a chance to watch the documentary A Band Called Death last week. I highly recommend checking it out, it’s a pretty amazing story. Here’s my review of it. And if you happen to be in the greater NYC area, Death are playing at the Afropunk festival in Brooklyn this weekend.
Noisy Cats 