Lovesong

Moving boxes shelving books is my idea of good honest work, and we all go out there and bum around the shipping floor getting shit done, and everyone brings cds so that they're piled up top of the changer, and whoever's putting on music in the morning just grabs six or so and throws them on. Hodge podge eclectic, of course, and I've learn to let the music run like water off my ducky strong back, and sure, maybe there's accordian, or sure, maybe there's the Go-Gos, nothing much to me. So I'm in my little den of order, rolling carts of reciepts and books around me, scanning scanning blip blip blip, and somebody's put the Cure on, and I just about die, because it's really not fair. You can't just put the Cure on. That's not how it works. At least not an entire cd of Robert Smith & Co. It's too much for mortal souls to handle. Throw one song on a mix, or something, but hearing him and them so much in one day, like you'll never know when they're gonna come on the overhead, but then they do and he's saying "just like heaven" and you're back there touching heel to ankle and dancing back and forth on some rubber mat put down so nobody strains their back, because you can't not dance to the Cure, even if you barely dance, and then he's singing " however far away" and who could help it, really, all I can think of is every stupid shared moment of skin on skin, some bright morning with squares of lit sun, some dark night lamp or nothing glowing"whatever words I say" and sure, sure, I believe you again "you make me feel like I am young again". You know everyone else is doing it, too, see here how we're all sort of silent when the Cure comes on, like everyone's about to cry but maybe, just maybe, we can get through this song so scan scan scan and check an ISBN, but then so thwarted because the cd changer skips and stammers to another song, but, oh, "pictures of you" and kill me now, right now "looking so long for the words to be true".

She's Chosen To Believe/ In The Hymns Her Mother Sings

In case you were going to, you close ones, you dear things to me, or even just vague whispering things that come somewhere in contact with this, please don't forget about Iron & Wine. Listen to "Fever Dream", or "Teeth In The Grass", or any song really, let it just play in the background while you bathe, or when you're drinking something warm, or just sitting staring out some fogged over window. You don't even have to listen, I suppose, if you don't want to, if your ears are broken for just today. Just go to Passing Afternoon and read the lyrics, see the way they are on the page, and that should be enough, even if the font is simple serif and the spaces are simpler still. I think his words make me remember that I do have a soul, as much as I forget that space is occupied, and how much work such things take, and how precious pearly they are. I could swear, if it made you hear me more.

Papa died smiling
Wide as the ring of a bell
Gone all star white
Small as a wish in a well

Seven Songs For Seven Singers (Memetastic)

"list seven songs you are into right now. no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, they must be songs you are presently enjoying. post these instructions in your journal, along with your seven songs. then four other people to see what they're listening to."

1. Damien Jurado- Just his voice. And the sound of his older stuff. I forgot about the year when I got into him so much, wheedling burnt copies of his cds out of people, passing off my fake i.d. at the Blackbird to see him smoke a cigarette, sing a few songs. I love that man.

2. Killers-Smile Like You Mean It: Finally, finally, after hints dropped so wide they could have paved the whole damn street, my roommates and neighbor bought me the Killers cd, thus (hopefully) putting an end to my propensity to gaze dramatically off into space and bob my head whenever their songs come on overhead at the bar. Imagined quote from the band: "Hey, guys, what do you think we should use in between out chorus hook and lyric hook?""I dunno. Howabout a bridge hook?"

3.Pixies-UMass: Because Frank Black loves to hear himself say stuff, and so do I, so even if I can't figure out what it all means I still get to stutter out the lines and feel like a badass ("like cap-i-talistssss, like comm-u-nissstss, like lot-sa thingsss, you heard about.").

4.Mountain Goats-There Will Be No Divorce: Is very haunting, sort of, Portland, sort of, and it talks about rain and radios and the hair stands up on the back of his neck and he delivers all the words in a soft way.

5. Gwen Stefani-Luxurious: The song I thought I'd never like has now wormed its way into my nonsensibilites through the gentle pull she gives to the lyrics at the line "E-gyptian cotton." A week ago, this would have been the Harajuku Girls song, chosen simply for its chance to allow me to annoy Kenneth by saying "Super Kawaii (that means 'super cool' in Japanese)" in a mock Japanese schoolgirl intonation.

6.Mr.Bungle-Sweet Charity: So damn catchy, Mr.Patton. So very damn catchy, and then there's little harmonies, and, like, seagulls and shit at the beginning. And just thinking of the title gets all the instrumentals stuck in my head, the bonging bass line and the the string section.

7.Vashti Bunyan-Lookaftering: Is an album, not a song, but I think about it all the time, and I don't even own it. I want it, though, pretty badly, and I want to sit and have some Kenyan tea and listen quietly with a blanket.

Standing At The Top Of The World

It has been so long since I've been to a show that I've enjoyed for something other than the sheer experience of it. I saw the gypsies, and they were loud and colorful and brightly took up the field of my vision. I saw the jazz show, and it was that well-worn experience of a room of people bobbing their heads real cool like. Both good, both notable events that I am glad I attended. But I felt no need to stay for either. I could have been for thrity minutes and still left happy. Once I saw the glint of instruments and the way the lights reflected off of manic bassists and madly grinning drummers, I was good.

What's nice, though, what entirely made my evening and then some, was getting to see an artist I love but had forgotten about, and thus an artist whose every song brought waves of fond recognition and an intense desire for an encore. A couple years back, getting into Damien Jurado sort of made the soundtrack to my summer. A couple of the boys I was close to were deeply passionate about the man, so there was no shortage of discs pushed into my waiting hands and from there into the cd burner, and from there into the car stereo. I really liked those songs. And I knew a lot of them, putting them on mix cds and then empathizing furiously with a few others. His voice has this real pleasant timbre, where it's easy to sing along to, and it's earnest and sometimes he raises it just a little and so it's like he really means it, you know? His songs are so well put together I could just die in little author-worshipping puddles all over the living room floor. His record label (Secretly Canadian) does describe him as Raymond Carveresque (oh he of the sparsely gorgeous middle class short stories), but for the life of me I am almost certain that I had already figured that out all by myself and was describing him as such before I even read their blurb. Take with grains of salt.

So I had seen him a couple of times (at least) already. Once before I was twenty-one, sneaking into the Blackbird with Patches and standing only slightly thralled, slightly worried but exhilarated to be in the smoky venue (you should all know by now, most venues are smoky for me). We had talked to Damien beforehand, Patches asking him to play a song, me shaking his hand. How it pretty much went in those days, me tag tag tagging behind my friend's more perversely gregarious nature. The other time I saw him was at Berbatis, the same venue as last night, and he was just him on a chair with a guitar. Patches has a tendency to turn on his most favored artists after he sees them live and they let him down by being just constructs of flesh and bone and mortality, but I live by breathing in and out the presence of the bands I love. I remember that the show was quiet, and the songs were close to what they are on the album, if not considerably slower. I remember being pretty glad when he added a little beat by rapping his knuckles against the body of the guitar. In other words, not what one would paint as impressive. Just a good little show with a guy I like to listen to.

Which is why last night was only like the best thing ever, a salve of goodness that reminded me about all the things I really do love about my favorite bands and about filing in to dark places, getting my hand stamped, and standing in one place for hours at a time . Damien was mustering a full band behind him, the guys from Delorean backing on drums and stuff, which meant these songs from "I Break Chairs" totally got played, and as much as I was loving the sweetness of the milder songs and we were all lines crosslegged on the floor in front, I had to get up for those songs, because the snares and beats were constant and good, and Mr.Jurado was doing what a good live artist does, and letting himself go above and beyond the constraints of the record they produced, stepping back from the mike and strumming furiously, or yelping out his lyrics louder and faster. I eat that sort of thing up, man. I was so happy. Every song just about was one I knew and liked deeply but had totally skipped my mind, and so every time they'd start in on an intro it was like a present wrapped in goodness, to me, from them.

And then I coerced the Voodoo guy out of a doughnut, even tho' they were closed and baking for the next day. Good man! Because the smell of sweet fried dough was wafting through the crowd, and we kept tapping each other and making little signs that were like, hey, we thought they were closed, but don't you smell the doughnuts too?

Fuck Subtlety

The mustaches are finely waxed and twirled, pointing out from the cupid's bow lips of the boys in fancy hats. This is one of those shows where you never know quite who'd going to be there, and what they're gonna do.

The opening band, punk rock they say, but western shirts and confederate hats so a bit of a drawl in the rapid fire inflection. The second band was trying too hard at achieving a cheap sensuality, pants riding low beneath the curve of hips, and a belt curled up and around the singers tattoed neck. He slung the microphone around and stuffed it into his mouth, letting out gutteral sounds as the black cord wrapped around the solid sweat covered ripple of his body, but the words didn't do anything at all. By the end he was trying to force the crowd into a rampant form of affection. Stripping off his pants and contorting wildly in a sort of rock star faun way across the low-ceilinged stage. I could've cared less, but I guess I didn't.

The main act was what all the freaks had turned out for, the beautiful pirate anachronists with buckled shoes and wicked stripes, faces inked or sparkled, spangles resting around lean torsos and hair teased crimped curled or flailed into submission or exhibition. The band had dancing girls with big bass drums and golden cymbals that crashed over the crowd, and they had an accordian, and they had a frenetic little man who jibbered out rapped lyrics that again, I couldn't understand but man, they sort of blew my mind. After three whiskeys and some coke, the night was flowing melodic and fluid through damp city streets, and the club was packed tight and full with all the bodies, and once the steady stomp of gypsy punk started up everyone cavorted madly. Really. Cavorting. There were attempts at slam dancing, scrawny scrawny boys, oh, how we love the way they try and wreck their fragile bodies across the pit, in the heat of things, magic marker scrawl across their thin white t-shirts. There were girls spinning in some sort of Old Country style, flaring skirts whipping tightly, floral prints blurring into stripes at the speed. Boots and shoes and high heels all trampling the drink slick floor. Gogol Bordello plays the kind of music that rises and falls and then rises higher and madder than ever, and the crowd pushes forward, and the band slows into a steady descant, but then they rise again and the crowd is pushing, pushing, clothes clinging damp and hair stringing with sweat, but the band is increasing the pace and the accordions are pumping wildly the air within, and the crowd is just going nuts. Rinse. Repeat. The small sea of people carrying one of the dancing girls, riding high on her drum, head ducked to avoid the lighting, beating still on the drumskin as the hands reach up to carry and crest. All night.

And then some. Second to last song, and there's a flutter of fliers tossed over the grinning bobbing heads, and so after a few quick stops for water and an exchange of friends and clothing (peeling off the old and letting it fall sticky to the floor, picking up the new and trying hard to fit the theme), it's off to the afterparty, billed as the Ultimate Balkan Dance Party. Alas! Just when I needed you most, man, where are you? The only one I know who'd practiced this sort of thing, who would be at home on a rainbow strobelit floor of Ukranians. It doesn't matter. Sitting quiet and industrial on a North Portland street, the bar was thin and dark, a long stretch of stools and mirrors that reflected back to us how much fun everybody must have been having. Looking into the mirror, it seemed like a television show, with the shadow of figures moving in and out of the beams of disco shining down. I talked the bartender out of a glass of orange juice and we listened to the garish dance music the band brought along with them, hunkering down and making small talk as the man next to us tried unsuccessfully to wave down a drink or two under the loudly stated pretense that "he was the one who made this all happen". Later, we'd see him drunk and limber on the floor, fancy dancing with a big blonde in a tight denim skirt and cowboy boots, after the floor had cleared out. A few minutes later we were int the night air, a few minutes before four, boots through puddles, exhausted, on the way to the car.

This Is What Happens

When I spend too much time alone, I start talking to sad emo songs. About halfway through, I realized that it was sort of weird to be doing the dishes and having a loud conversation with Jets To Brazil. So I transcribed it.

Sea Anemone

The curtain's a sea anemone
Whoa, whoa. What?
in the way it sways
Nice. Nice.
to the slow breeze

I lie spread out on the floor
Oh, poor Blake.
looking at these things
Things are nice, though.
and most of them are yours
That's too bad, geez, I'm sorry.

and it's so nice
What's nice?
sitting very still
Yeah, sitting still's pretty cool.
without those old shoes
Whose old shoes?
I could never fill
Oh...yours.
starfish with its arms out in a daze
Whoa! A starfish? Where did that come from?
staring at the stars
Is it you? I get it. You're the starfish.
through an ocean haze
Yeah, yeah. like your tears. They're both salt water and all that. You're a star.

was I one you wished upon?
burned out like a lightbulb
A lightbulb?
when you turned me on
Good one, good one.
and it's so nice
What's nice?
sleeping here
Yeah, sleeping.
all alone
Ohhh...alone? I'm sorry, Blake.
with my ashtray
(smoker)
and white courtesy telephone
That's actually a nice little phrase. White courtesy telephone.
now I'm making out the shapes
Making out! Awesome! Who are you making out with?
like the shower rod - can it take my weight?
No one. You're going to kill yourself. Don't kill yourself!
I will tell you I am fine
I thought you were going to kill yourself?
I got some news, friend, feels like I'm dying
sounds like it, too.

turtle on its back in the desert sea
Wait, the desert? We were just in the ocean. And your living room.
and you look like a cool drink
Yeah you do.
just slightly out of reach
draw myself into the shell
Oh, you're the turtle.
waiting on a sign from god
The religious turtle.
or a nod from hell

and it's so nice
sitting very still
without those old shoes
I could never fill

now we're turning on the lights
Yay, the lightbulb didn't burn out after all.
it's the first day
Of the rest of your life!
of my second life
take my name off of the lease
Oooohhh...
you can even keep the name it never suited me
Burn!

Fondly, Of Course

It seems my appetite for nostalgia is outpacing itself. I find myself sitting in back rooms, listening to shitty bands play, reminescing about sitting in other back rooms and listening to other shitty bands play. "Shitty" is not the word I'm looking for. I'm sorry. It's whatever that intangible element of novice is, when a kid steps up to the poorly amped mike and says..

"I made up this song yesterday. It doesn't really have any words yet. I thought I'd try and just try some sort of free association."

And then he takes a quick step back and checks the chord he's fingering, and then taps his toe one two three, one two three and begins. Or when the band has finished setting up and they all look at each other, holding a conversation we can all hear because, I mean, we're standing about three feet away, and they're arguing over keys but then it all gets resolved and one two three, one two three and they burst out with drums and anxious strumming. When they step up to the mike it's with their mouths wide open and eyes squeezed firmly shut, barking out each word until they forget a few and then get back on track.

The kids in this venue are almost all underage, and they almost all know the string of performers. In between sets they help wind up cords, they move around equipment, they congratulate. All hyped up on Red Bulls, they bounce around to the danceable songs and adjust their sweaters when the last beats die out.

I remember the old Meow Meow, the venue we loved to hate. Filing in behind kids younger than we were, scraping the insides of our wallets and behind the sofa cushions (no, really), to find the five bucks that was going to get us into the show. The girls were all wearing carefully tattered clothing, the boys were growing their first facial hair and all of them were clumping in carefully delineated groups around the room, sending emissaries back and forth when gossip required it. Low ceilings, concrete floor, a leopard print curtain I always hated. But the bands! Holey Moley! I saw Pedro the Lion, I saw the Gossip, the All Girl Summer Fun Band (who I tentatively approached afterwards), the Dismemberment Plan on their last tour, Alien Ant Farm (I was on the guest list, no paying money for that one), Mates Of State, Calvin Johnson (lots of K Records bands, if I remember right), Casket Lottery, Delorean ( I think. Either them or Crosstide), and then just an endless string of local and national small small bands that were opening for whomever I had heard of that headlined. I know this list is woefully short. I remember going once or twice a week, making the drive in from my apartment in the suburbs, waiting to turn twenty-one so I wouldn't have to hang out with fourteen year olds anymore.

And yet... I'm still sort of nostalgic. Everyone was young and fun. Not mid-twenties and drinking heavily, nodding at the saddest lyric they could hear. These kids were rabid and erratic, twitching and happy in the music, and I was still nervous and wierd leaning up against a wall. Now, I find myself lost in a crowd that's standing still, wanting to move and not understanding why everybody's feet are still sticking to the floor.

It's Too Late Now

The week is pushing against itself in a frustration of hours rubbing up to hours too quickly. It is constrained, tied tight in a corset of minutes that it can't wiggle out of. I could let it out, take the last few steps running and then stumble to a walk, but instead there's the possibility of lacing more and more in. So I make some calls. A stamp on the hand, ushering me in, disaffected but thrilled. I want to name drop, event drop, time and place drop all over the floor and let you see, we'll see. I can tell you things that sew flaring skirts around it without ever naming names. There was my wrist, held out and flashing a stripe of blue bracelet that disagreed and said no, I am really with the band, I swear. Wandering up stairs to stand awe and star struck by the men with guitars, standing out being outstanding, holding tight and lofty court with the people all playing at being people who are playing. Musicfest, once more, I have entered your pricy chambers unscathed. And then the band, oh, the darling band. Coming home early morning to the french boy asking if I'd like some herbal tea. Who would say no, really? They were only briefly here, sleeping on our floor and sofas, filling the living rooom with the warm stink of tired boy. In the small checkered cafe, yellow sweatered minors stomping at invisible spiders in a caffeinated dance to the sweet small percussion and recorder accompanied beats. The band was good, so good. In the morning I made them thick carrot raisin pancakes that we spread with light cream cheese and ate, standing around the absence of a table in the dining room. Walking home after shows in parts of town that would kick my ass if I didn't have my donut held high and a paper carton of milk square in my hand as I walk bold booted through too many blocks on my way past doorways and winos, gutterpunks crumpled black leather in shadows. Week of September 4-10th. Bands Seen: Crooked Fingers, Careen, Robyn Hitchcock, Train Go Sorry, Colin Meloy, Dolorean, Kid Francois, Chad Bault, Arctic Circle, Reclinerland, Laura Gibson. Actual Performances Seen, Thus Eliminating From the List Bands and Members Merely Glimpsed While Hanging Around Other Band's Shows:Crooked Fingers, Robyn Hitchcock, Colin Meloy, Kid Francois, Chad Bault, Arctic Circle. Groups Accidentally Missed: Hot Air Balloon Ride, Jean Grae. Bands Shaken Hands With: Crooked Fingers, Kid Francois, Arctic Circle, Chad Bault, Laura Gibson, Hot Air Balloon Ride. Performers Briefly Lived With: Kid Francois, Arctic Circle. Singer/Songwriters Trapped In Stalled Cars With Until The Tow Truck Came: Laura Gibson

I Couldn't Think Of Another Band I'd Rather Have Be From Portland

As if I needed more reasons to love the Decemberists without abandon, I will just go ahead and let you know that the show tonight was incredible, and if I do some tricky non-mathmatical mathmatical reasoning in my head, the twenty dollars I spent for the ticket evened out to ten. And we don't even think about the whiskey coke money. We already forgot about that, and it falls forgotten from the final tally. The opening act was Sarah Dougher, who I've always heards personal stories about and then felt excited when I saw her name in print, but never actually seen. The way she stood there with her guitar and just a drummer made me think of the old days, before I turned 21, when we would go to the old Meow-Meow and watch whomever just rock the small stage with the shallow ceiling and that horrid leopard-print backdrop I always hated, and the us dregs from the barrel of underage hipness would flail around and get all hot and sweaty for whatever they played, and it'd be just some girls and guitars and little old three chord them up there, but they'd be earnest and eager and we all'd lap it up. Maybe that's rosy tinting it a bit, but that's what I'm good at. Now the crowd was a bit disappointing, just consisting of anyone who had an extra twenty to fling the way of the show (which was a benefit concert, so it went to a good cause, which also factors into my reasoning). Lots of girls dressed in lots of ways that all looked alike. But that's not fair, now, is it? I always disapprove of the crowd at a Decemberists show, always wanting them to be pale young things in period garb. And that's never how it's going to be, they're more than just a novelty act designed to help me meet boys in woolen knickers. And it's okay that the DF is much cleaner than the Meow Meow. Aside from all the commotion about whether or not the crowd met my approval, I had got what I chanced on, that the band would be looser and more approachable due to the circumstances surrounding the show. Which was absolutely true. The interaction up on stage was playful at the least, and filled with witty shining moments of things said, pantomines and this exquisite arched eyebrow Colin Meloy can muster. The evening was chock full of covers, including a version of "Tam Lin" sung by Petra Haden that was very... well, it was a song that hailed a different era, but one much more recent than their usual. By the end, after the blistering electric guitar solos (of course, blistering. I don't know how else to describe it without wiggling my fingers at the top of an imaginary guitar and going "Deeedle-dee-deedle-dee-Deedle-deedle" etc.), the entire band was on its knees in some form or another, and the crowd was nuts. The cover song "Mr.Blue Sky" actually had a part where Colin made the entire crowd sit down, and then stepped into the audience to tell us a short story about a man named Jeff Lynne, who formed the original Electric Light Orchestra. It was just a pleasure to listen to, and that's almost all I've got to say. The members appeared to be having a great time, having recovered some of the original instruments that had gotten stolen a while back, and the boys behind me were loud in their praise and in belting out lyrics with me. All was good at the Doug Fir tonight.

People worry, what are they worrying about today?

The thing with the Violent Femmes is that they're never violent enough for me. If I'm in the audience and I hear the music, I can close my eyes and imagine the jittery twentysomething on stage, pulled tight like a live wire, but when I open them it's only sweet-faced Godon Gano playing like it's easy. I want them so badly to be more, I want them to light the crowd until we're all angsty firecrackers set to goo off in...

...I took one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family and three, three.....

At the same time, I have this very large amount of person-to-person respect for any man who can still act gracious as the sweaty fair-going masses go happy nuts for the five hundreth version of "Blister In The Sun." If I were him, I would have long since turned petty and recalcitrant and just plain unwilling to appease the radio friendlies.

Word on the street, which I'm very thrilled about, is that Gordon Gano is a, as they say, "devout Christian." Which rocks my socks off, to know that when they cover the Byrds "Christian Life", with the lyrics:

My buddies tell me that I should've waited
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
But I still love them and I sing with pride
I like the Christian life...

...it's not nearly as ironic as one would think. What's even more interesting and notable is that the other guitarist, Brian Ritchie, is a devout atheist, with his side projects having names like "No Resistin' a Christian" and "Religion Ruined My Life". Yet somehow, in a display of tolerance that, if concentrated, could perhaps bring new ways of conflict resolution to the Middle East, they've played together in a band for the last twenty odd years. Trust me on this one when I tell you that bands have enough issues after only a few months, not including any large idealogical gaps .

I've decided that I really like the Violent Femmes, and that's really something to consider, since I haven't devoted any time in this whatsoever to the Decemberists, who opened the stage for the Femmes last night. Rest assured that they were great, and I died a little inside every time I had to come to grips with the realization that I could not get anywhere close to the stage because I gave my roommates a ride and we left too late.

Let's Dance (For Fear Your Grace Should Fall)

"What would Jello Biafra say, if he saw you doing the fucking 'Safety Dance'?" It's a fair question, but the lanky boy just gives us his best toothy leer and rubs his sweaty shirted torso up against my friend's bare arm, so she rolls her eyes and recoils in mock disgust, and then shoves him out of the noisy clamor of the bar, into the hallway. "Is that, indeed, what Jello would do?", I ask. She nods grimly and sort of shrugs. The question was fair. The room has been packed with kids doing their best to pretend they rememember the Eighties, with help of the giant screen in front of the dj that shows a steady succession of glossy lipped mouths wrapping their copious lips around the words to the songs that everybody knows. I'm not even sure why we were there, but I believe it was some sort of personal hysteria on my part. The day was filled with box jockeying and phone answering, and since I work in receiving that means I'm fuckin' tuff, right, so the night was young and so was I, so after a few false starts and a couple of drinks, we were dodging bullets in downtown Portland because Walter the dear was meeting people at Eighties Night which meant I felt that there was highly logical and rational reason for me to subject myself and others to the retro throwback throw-up that such nights entail for the general populous. Which means, hours and hours and jello shots after the evening began, we are lurking on the fringes of a crowded dance floor, two stories up above the city. While I was waiting to get in the door, the music blaring from inside sounded awful. "Even when I was saying 'Eighties Night, Eighties Night', I didn't think they'd be playing this song." Kenny Loggins is describing how very much he wants everybody to cut loose. Footloose, in fact. "I did." my friend replies. I grimace. The next one's even worse, but by that time we're in the bar, already regretting it. At least some of the people are familiar, and there's a lot of friends of friends, so the dance floor is friendly even if I'd rather sit than ever attempt to dance to "Maniac" (that's for sure). The single redemption to the non-stop block of soundtrack songs is a girl we dub "Eighties", for the sheer reason that she does the best job of personifying that actual decade that we've ever seen, give or take are distaste for the decade itself. She dances mostly alone, but she bounces through the crowd like every movie montage you've ever seen, shoulders twitching and feet bopping against the lighter than air ballroom floor, head thrown back and short hair shaking madly in the rotating lights. Compared to her, we are all poseurs, amateurs in a world she recreates merely by dancing, dancing like she's never danced before.Which brings us back to the boy in question, actually, and his also lanky friend. Coming back to my seat after a particularly rousing play of "Down Under" by Men At Work ( during which I danced with my roomate while we utilized a full semaphore of lyrics translated into bodily motions, and which I consider one of the dim highlights of the evening), Cole gestured over to the dance floor with a sort of "what the hell are they doing here?" expression. I followed the line of her pointed finger through the crowd, until it rests ona tall boy in a tight black shirt and Dickies sticking his little neck out in a very awkward chickenish sort of dance move. Upon further observation, he brought to mind my friend Patches, except I couldn't recall ever seeing Patches dance except in short bursts of excitement when the A's win. Perhaps it was the close shorn hair, perhaps the fact that the back of his shirt said Lookout! Records and I know for a fact that Patches' band back in Berkeley had a song on one of their compilations, back when everything was punk as fuck and couches were beds and beer was breakfast. I have heard those stories. So what was this kid doing here, exactly, letting down his scene by gyrating in thick stomping motions across the thicket of sweaty half-hipsters? "You have a good eye.", I say, leaning in confidentially as if I really needed to in the dull roar of dancers and post-disco. Cole nods, and we sit back and watch them for a while, taking in the absurdity of the entire situation. Who are we, really, to judge? We're here, aren't we? She doesn't dance, but I am lured out to the floor time after time for reasons beyond my grasp, because it's the closest thing to a live show or violence that I can find. One of the boys we came with, a lord of the manor type in a thin white tie and suit coat, is making his rounds, insinuating himself into all the different dancing groups. We watch him for a bit and then refocus on the boys in matching black shirts, shaking our heads sadly at the spectacle. The other one has a shirt with a Dead Kennedys graphic on it, and the logo for Alternative Tentacles on the back. Quite a pair. "If you took me out more, I wouldn't wind up in places like this." Cole's been promising to take me out to punk shows, and we'll mingle and mangle together. I've been looking forward to it ever since I heard the idea, and she's from Brooklyn so for some reason I'm confident we can handle whatever comes our way together. Kicking ass and taking numbers, I've been promised. She bobs her head in acknowledgement, and we renew our plans once more, and as Modern English comes up on the speakers I weave through the loosely herded chairs and tables until I find Walter, and we spin around, loosely choreographed, until one of the Berkeley toughs stomps his scrawny way into the center and flails briefly, and I try to keep up in a dignified manner until he stomps his way on through. Later, as they're heading through the door, Cole will reach up until she has his ear and shout her question over the din, and he shoves at her while all his friends laugh, and we chuckle to ourselves and later, sprawled out on the sidewalk in front of the Crystal Ballroom, I promise never to bring her to Eighties Night again.

God's Got A Heaven For Country Trash

I was worried about myself the other day because I had remembered about the Mermaid Avenue sessions and was enjoying them, but at the same time realizing that I do have a small class prejudice regarding your sort of generic white country folk. Not the people with land and goats and old trucks as much as the ones topless at the river, or the ones building pole barns to sell dollar store junk out of. Girls twisting tattooed hips with mean grins walking up a gravel road. And, I mean, Guthrie and Bragg and all them, they were and are all about the working man, and do I lack some sort of understanding? Am I being hypocritical, turning down country roads listening to new folk songs from years ago while maybe just a little looking down my nose at the other people who've appropriated new country as their genre of choice to set them apart from the city people and their shiny non-functional sport utility vehicles? I mean, I do believe Johnny Cash should be canonized into the list of Catholic Saints, but in twenty years would I be holding on to Travis Tritt as some symbol of class rebellion?

Patsy Cline, I'm okay with. I hold no qualms about my identifications with her. She plays the jilted with an overarching sense of bitter so well, and I can't help but to be drawn to that and attempt to claim it as my own. Mr.Cash loses me every now and then, but he's more of that father figure I never had (or did I...?) and so I cling to his black clad side with an unfailing devotion.

What does disappoint me is that I don't feel nearly as drawn to the original recordings of Guthrie's music. I have to have the combination of Wilco, Billy Bragg, the occasional female interlude to really get sucked in.

So Kiss Me With Your Mouth Open Turn the Tires Toward The Street (Pt.2 of 6)

mountain goats Originally uploaded by threw_a_spark. Part two of six in the ongoing CURRENT FAVORITE SONGS meme, a track weighing in at two minutes, ten seconds. It's the MOUNTAIN GOATS-DILAUDID. The album is supposed to be highly autobiographical, and John Darnielle is putting together this collage of thoughts and songs about his late abusive father. One of the more intensely disturbing thematic choices I've latched onto lately, and it doesn't help to be listening to it and suddenly hear lines like "And then I'm awake and I'm guarding my face/ hoping you don't break my stereo /because it's the one thing I couldn't live without/ so I think about that / and sorta black out." But enough about the album as a whole, that's not what I'm doing this for. Track Four is the one I've been obsessed with, ever since I heard him just start out "The reception's gotten fuzzy / the delicate balence has shifted/ Put on your gloves and your black pumps /Let's pretend the fog has lifted / Now you see me /Now you don't / Now you say you love me / Pretty soon you won't." He was standing onstage in the dark venue, and I was still sort of unclear on how good this whole thing was going to be, but then I was just breathless. On the actual studio recording, it opens with a thick grouping of strings, something unusual for the Goats, adding in that air of an almost soundtrack recording. His voice, though, feels the same as it's ever been. It's the catches in his speech that make the song for me, and how he's rhyming in small well-crafted ways. I'm not sure what or who it's about. I don't think his father, since the twice repeating chorus-like bit says "kiss me with your mouth open", but it's like, she's driving, I don't know, and they're pulling away from the curb and something violent and beautiful is falling to it's knees, and all the singer can do is insist that the moment be forged in some way that will enable him to hold it close in the upcoming days. The quiet bleak days, with scotch and a four-track. He talks about "hiking up your fishnets", he talks about taking your foot off the brake, and I know the song is too over the top to try and pretend it's something real and happening, but the way he escalates his voice at the end and just beseeches you, ah, it's a good line and a good song and you'll want to listen to it again even if it hurts. "All the chickens come home to roost/Plump bodies blotting out the sky/You know it breaks my heart in half/To see them try to fly/Cause you just can't do things your body wasn't meant to" DILAUDID (hydromorphone hydrochloride): (WARNING: May be habit forming), a hydrogenated ketone of morphine, is a narcotic analgesic.

...And Stay Sweet

We treat each other so well when we're drunk, and by well and treating I mean that suddenly the things that keep us sullen and sitting on oppposite sides of the car come crumbling down and we can not I repeat can not for our individual lives remember why we ever fought, and we cling to each other in the crowd like the other one could be the livesaver we were hoping for. My hand over your hand over my hand over your hand, arms and bodies wrapped together up against the front, and I can feel it when you sing, chest reverberating and music sounding in between where we meet. This is not last night, when you left me so you could go make crack, five shifty eyed boys filing into a Plaid Pantry at five o'clock in the morning hoping for baking soda, or powder, I don't rememember. Tonight is just you and me and the shadows, baby.

Sitting downstairs before the show, stolen glasses in the basement stuffed inside your bag, we lean back in our chairs and we are, for the moment, the goddamn fucking shit. We came down waving drink tickets, already drunkish enough from the whiskey and coke (it was girl's night at the bar but your theme was the myth of the female orgasm) but the hell we'd let this slip away from us. The Mountain Goat on the right gave us the ticket, and we set it down in front of the bar keep and asked for his finest and then stole the glasses. And then I cried, but first I leaned over you in a lover's embrace pressing up close and winking while you secreted the goblets away and then. Then I sat back down and looked at you again and blinked big wide eyes and the lower lip it quivered and you said, no no darling, sweetheart, tell me what's wrong. But you were already the one that told me what was wrong, and my old tattoo plans are decimated, for instead of love, sweet love, love love love no instead of love I am having engraved on my back in a place where it hurts in deep letters that I am EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE and that's what this was all about. So I didn't answer 'cause we knew and I wasn't supposed to be the one with the fatal flaw no that was him but he feels bad. So I was up and rubbing wet mascara on your shirt. Aw, he feels bad. I am the faux pas he can't face, because he feels bad. And it wasn't her, it was never her, the whole thing was not about her as much as my personal mythology built that up into a tenet and fell down in tearful worship of the cog that broke the two backs. It was not her, it was me. And I unzipped myself as much as I could but that wasn't enough for him, and they've talked, and this is what I was. All capitals. Unavailable. Every inch of private land that was open for settlement, that wasn't enough. All I was and all I gave, was not enough. Me at my openest was not enough to match an eighteen year old and I'll be damned right here and now if I tell you why I'm crying in the basement of this shitty club in a hippy town. When you are drunk, you tell secrets, and when I am drunk, I hear them. When we are drunk, together, our worlds turn into sodden open books that we read aloud, and our mutual friends cement the deal.

The show, the show, everybody's here for the show. And the show is like a blink to me. I remember standing and the lights and the applause and then one solitary encore. I remember clutching at you when you reached back for me, and I remember singing into your shoulder when I didn't want to drown out Mr. Darnielle, and I remember clapping very loudly. He gave you so much, but on the way home I was still comforting you, rubbing my fingers through your hair as you rested the flat of your hand on my leg and swore up and down how your loyalty was broken. Palms resting hot on each other in the night air, you damned him and the dubious parentage he rode in on, and you gave them back the shirt you bought because you didn't care, didn't want it anymore. Peter tried to give your money back but you were too good for that. I'm glad I left before that stage of assholery set in, because it's always too jarring. I leaned up on a lightpole outside and made eyes at all the underage boys when they came up to network, hair cut short for summer but still hanging in their eyes, and they're oversexed and undersated, and yeah I'll check out your band when you come to town. But we got the fuck out of that town, back to the town we got the fuck out of just a few hours before. Following the big band van, then giving the fuzz the slip, doubling back on ourselves oh shit oh shit oh shit he flipped a bitch but then Mr.Oberst appears on your mix-tape and we're gonna get real fucking drunk in the moments before my driveway appears in view and Portland is home again and sooner or later we'll wish we never went or worse yet we'll wish we stayed because it seems the further away and the drunker we get (from home) the more we gravitate together and the more it tears down those walls -ha-ha- those walls we'be both got buit so high they're just toppling, toppling and I can't breathe under brick can you? So we're yelling at the top of our lungs but by the time we're home we've retreated, once more, into the four corners.

Something Sweeter To The Tongue (Pt. ! of 6)

Following up, finally, to something I promised to do a while ago. When we went to the beach the other week, it was a funny thing, as far as music went. Her car only had a tape deck, so we rummaged through a pile of tapes her ex/my friend had given her and put one in. Hers were near identical to the ones he had given me, with a few notable exceptions, but as a whole it meant that we could sing along together on our way out to the coast. He was just mad about the Weakerthans back in that day, so the mix was seasoned with John K. Samson rhyming cleverly about somthing or the other. And I had forgotten about the Weakerthans, forgotten about how much I loved letting their lyrics roll off of my tongue. We sang with gusto, we sang happily, and with much enunciation. When I got back, over the next couple of days I put them in nonstop, finding that I still remembered huge portions of songs and adored them still. Of course, when revisting old cds, you realize that there was this one song that didn't strike you as great before but now, now that you hear it again for the first time, it's the greatest thing ever. Which is why my first nomination for the six current favorite songs is THE WEAKERTHANS: CONFESSIONS OF A FUTON-REVOLUTIONIST "Held like water in your shaking hands, are all the small defeats a day demands, Ten to six and nine to five, trying dying to survive, never knowing what survival means." The great part is, once you let that first line leave your lips, the rest of the song flows as naturally as anything, which means it gets a lot of play on the do-it-myself soundtrack for the big white van I'm driving (which lacks a radio or music producing device of any sort outside of myself). Before I know it, I'm singing the last stretch of lines, which ends with this beautiful roll-call of future possibilities, things to believe in. "Talk the night away, You call in sick, I'll quit the word-games that I play, I swear I way more than half believe it, When I say that: Somewhere love and justice shine Cynicism falls asleep Tyranny talks to itself Sappy slogans all come true We forget to feed our fears" And how gorgeous are those, really? I sing the song over and over, it being one of the few that I can sing straight through without realizing the gaps in my knowledge. You have to hear it, really. That opening bit, so good. There's like a half-second's beat or somthing where you know what's coming, and you smile and wait for it in the breath he takes before launching into the song.

While The Heat From In Their Pockets Could Burn Marks Into Their Legs

So the other evening was one of those shows that kind of blindsides. You think it's like this but it's really like this, yeah? Showing up at 9:oo with the crowd of high schoolers dressed up like record store clerks, pushing up the staircase through the crowd of promgoers from the room below (a bit surreal, all the tiaras and evening gowns), and then filtering into the underage melting pot to stare at the light show and the glowing tv screens. You could tell things were going to be a little different, as there were boys with eyeliner comingling with the girls in tight jeans and studded belts. And that "little different" was all the result of a little band called the Faint. Suddenly, the pack of small girls disappated and was replaced by sweating sometimes shirtless boys flinging themselves about, and the area once reserved for swooning turned into a teeming mass of violent bodies pressing up towards the microphones.

I never thought I'd see that at a Bright Eyes show.

Let's be honest. I don't know the Faint that well. I used to say that I hated them, that they were the only band on Saddle Creek that I utterly disliked. Then I found out that Joy Electric had them do a remix of one of their songs, so I had to accept them. Therefore, I begrudgingly made my way to liking one of their songs, but still avoided them. But I have to say, as the sweat from my eyebrows was stinging and the topless guy in front of me slipped back and forth like a fish spawning towards Todd Baechle, the Faint did a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel and any resentfulness I still carried evaporated.

"The only girl I ever loved...was born with roses in her eyes" but imagine with the entire pulsing electronic grinding rock of the Faint to back it up. One of the best moments of the show, really, the moment where I completely lost the awareness of the elbows and fists flying through the air around me.

It was like a video game, I think. There were different levels, and different objects to collect to ensure your survival. IF you were to ever reach the front for Conor and Co., you had to brave the thicket of testosterone that signalled the front lines for the Faint's crowd. Water bottle in hand (ice coldness long gone luke warm from the sardines packed around), breathing in hot salt air and elbowing ever so carefully in the general direction of the stage, making sure to use the impetus of the people behind you, throwing deeply apologetic expressions if knocked too roughly into a total stranger. If your timing's off, you could lose it all, being forced to extricate your parched body from the throng in order to either get water or collapse in a heap on the ballroom floor. If you drink first, then buy water, and you dole out that water very carefully to yourself, it'll last long enough that you don't have to worry about dehydration. Just swollen lips or crushed feet or the fact that your shoe may very well fall off. In between songs and sets, jockey for a position free of hazards like the Girl Wearing Her Long Hair Down and a Scratchy Wool Jacket, who I had the misfortune to be stuck behind for a good five minutes, inhaling wayward scented strands and shuddering everytime my bare arm came up against her ridiculous apparel.

But then, in the heat of the interim between sets, when everybody was growing restless and shifting from foot to foot in their limited space, some gracious soul up at the front took to passing out cold bottles of water, a power-up, if you will, and they passed from hand to hand, swig to swig, until the last drops had been drained.

What Have You Bought Into How Much Will It Cost To Buy You Out?

"Dear Goddess, We made this breakbeat just for you-as an offering Can you hear us now?" I don't think I can adequately express the line above without the benefit of Saul Williams' style, especially not in print. It's a repeated repeated line in a particular piece of his, which starts off with a recording of one of his father's sermons regarding fatherhood, and Saul's own addition begins "Our Father-who art in-St.Francis' hospital-for hypertension". And then he echoes in this bit about offering up a holy breakbeat, over and over and if only Mr.Williams didn't go on to talk so convincingly in his belief of his own diefication I would swallow this line whole. Unfortunately, he's let himself have such a loose grasp on the possibility of Truth that even though his music stirs this intensity in my blood that reminds me to live again, I still have to take several steps back and raise my hands up at the album sometimes, saying "Naw, naw, I'm not buying that, man. Bullshit." But still, that line, such a mantra of dedicating creativity, and the idea of returning it to a mother figure rather than a father figure changes the context so much for me, that just hearing that idea raises the hair on the back of my neck. I swear, I'd shrug off most people who pulled this sort of thing on me in a matter of moments, but there's something about this guy that I have to take his message and just subtly alter it against what I know he believes because it'd be such a shame to let some of these lines go to waste. He talks about having his soul tattooed on his tongue, about making his soul rhyme with his mind, all these fertile similes and metaphors that just sit there begging for me to cobble them into my own belief system, so I drive from Hillsboro to Portland just listening to the intonation of his metered prayer.

No I Didn't Do Anything

'S too late 's too late and I know that very well but still if there's ever going to be a chance of me getting up in the morning it's hinging strictly on the fact of me staying up late enough to recharge my cell phone tonight. Tonight was a bit escapist and we all knewit but fuckit Eric Bachmann was there and if Crooked Fingers wasn't enough to snap me out of my slump of a day then frankly it seemed hopeless 'cause once you get that phone call that says sorry we went with someone else (or sorry I went with someone else for that matter) the rest of the day seems well you know doomed to personal failure so roll with it. Forget the uneven (odd) conversations you tried to have hammer out your broken heel find the missing garter and matching socks and then leave. Leave the house leave the eastside and venture in to the city's alleys in hopes of spending time with those other miserable souls. Hand stamped at the door yes thank you I'm twenty with a two yes I know I don't look it can I have a well whiskey and coke please? And I discovered this tonight even though I already knew it but alcohol? My achilles heel. You could be the biggest puppykicker in the world but hey if when I meet you I find a drink in my hand presented by the generosity of your wallet suddenly I'll realize people really must have misjudged you. In fact (a hint for the hopeless) if you wait until I've already downed one and found it sweet stuff the second will strike my tongue an old and dear friend and who wouldn't want to leave that taste in my mouth? Geez the Crooked Fingers' show was all I ever wanted short of an actual live replaying of the Reservoir Songs album. The band stumbled down to our level as the evening progressed and suddenly it was an unplugged mariachi singalong to Valerie and Sleep All Summer in front of the stage and the boy with the very model of a girlfriend turned and said very nice to me when we were finished, presumably in some sort of reference to my knowledge of a goodly portion of the lyrics and I sincerely hope he wasn't kidding and I was too two sheets to the wind to notice. Many blessings heaped upon the wonder of wonderous peoples populating my aquaintenceship and showing up in nooks and crannies of these shows I wander into alone. There's a redemptive quiet thrill that stirs itself deep in my cockled heart every time I see a familiar face.

Beauty, Music, Shicky Gnarowitz

Shicky Gnarowitz was the tune emanating out of the underbrush while you made a deal with the crisply spatted Devil, still sure that you'd felt the ephemeral breath of the loophole that could postpone your undoing in this antebellum town.

Shicky Gnarowitz is the lightly dusted book of photographs that your grandmother couldn't show you, a faded corporal shadow hovering at the edge of sepia-toned squares of a life you'd never understand. She kept them in the false bottom of a steamer trunk.

Shicky Gnarowitz was in the hive of bees on St.Begas piece of sod as she drifted through salted seas, her only sustenance the honey they produced. When the wind turned sour, they spun madly about her but never stung.

Shicky Gnarowitz is the widow in black chiffon, walking by the open windows of a summer evening's wedding feast and wilting the magnolias on the maid of honor's dress.

By Any Memes Possible

Total volume of music files on my computer?
11.8 gb. The advent of 56k brought the low number. If, in a parallel world, I still lived with my parents and their glorious broadband, ridiculous amount of information would once again be stored on my computer. (Wait. Is that just a new way of saying how many cds you own? 'Cause I've got about 500 of those.)

The last CD I bought was... Shicky Gnarowitz and the Transparent Wings Of Joy. I am so glad you asked me. It's as if the musical interludes from every Decemberists album had been upped about ten notches on the gloriously beautiful scale, and I highly recommend it, and not just so you'll also have the joy of informing someone how much you love it. Sexy klezmer music that will make you weep, or dance madly about in a joyish enthusiasm, taken over by the gods of violin, string bass, and guitar.

Song playing right now:
Mountain Goats-Horseradish Road..."the enigma variations/ on the radio, things that I could guess at/ the things that I already know/the twelve thousand dollars /that turned up in your purse/You've done something awful/I've done something worse." Mmmm....good.

Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (In no particular order):
1. Pedro The Lion-The Only Reason I Feel Secure (Is That I am Validated By My Peers). I have that memory of when this album utterly changed how I viewed the world, or at least focused these feelings that never had definition before. I wish I could pick a song and say that it was the one that really did it, the one that meant more than the others, but the record as a whole is indivisible when tackling these postmodern Christian themes with a surprising amount of honesty and, most importantly, grace. I remember driving around Portland and surrounding for hours just replaying and replaying the short span of the eight songs. Eight songs? Is that really all there was to this conversion experience?

2. Crooked Fingers-Reservoir Songs-I listened to this cd once or twice every morning for God-knows-how-long last year. It's that rare beast, a subtle break-up record. Eric Bachmann (formerly of Archers Of Loaf) put out a 6 track cover album comprised of the cathartic evolution of:
Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down
Neil Diamond's Solitary Man
Prince-When You Were Mine
Bruce Springsteen-The River
Bowie/Queen-Under Pressure
They rebaptize these themes of love and loss and redemption under Mr.Bachmann's Neil Diamond in a Southern Gothic church voice, and there's an air to the progression that heals.

3. That damned "Such Great Heights". There was this time when I would put on the Postal Service version and swear this song was the sweetest creation of bips and childlike romance to ever meet my cd player. When I discovered the Iron & Wine cover, I nearly dissolved into fits of rabid appreciation, listening to it in hushed rooms with reverent silence. Ever since, it's dominated emotional moments in my life with a callous agenda to do nothing but give me overly-sentimental memories. It'd mix with the smells of bacon frying in he mornings, and we'd sway. Sway, dammit! I'm not a home swayer, but for this song, anything.
"Since then, it has caused me nothing but bittersweet grief in various forms by coercing itself to be played at a variety of functions and events where I have been in attendence, with or without an ex-significant other that shall go unamed, sometimes pre-ex-status, sometimes post-ex status, and sometimes in that little in-between area between post and pre."-a previous statement by myself regarding the same topic.

4. Everclear-Nervous and Weird- There's the grit of high school angst rubbing itself off on this song, and I couldn't have felt more at peace in my restless skin than listening to lyrics that talked about splintering out of sheer awkwardness and a desire to metamorphisis into someone who could feel bright in the day.

5. Blackalicious-Feel That Way-It's righteous prozac for the soul, you see? A direct counterpoint to the heaps of drama spinning in my stereo, a song that can do no harm. I remember the first time I heard a Blackalicious song, back in '99, I think, when I was still working at the mall and there was that kid who'd bring in his dancey-trancey music sprinkled with hip-hop and the Cut Chemist Workout fomr A2G was playing and it blew.my.mind. I loved it, and I followed the trail until I found Blazin' Arrow several years later and this song, this song was what I'd been looking for all that time (Another memory from that era was listening closely as one of my employees defined "emo" for me, as I had never heard the term.).

Pardon Me, Sir, But Where Have You Misplaced Your Anachronists?

I should always be hesitant when creating my own idealized mental images of how an upcoming event will be. In my head, the Decemberists show would be chock full of those boys still stepping out of a hansom cab (and hitting every rung on the way down, if you know what I mean), but as it was I saw nary a pair of legitimate knickers. This was a brief disappointment to an otherwise (what word to use? Magical? Fantastic?...no...) delightful evening. Really though, a slap on the wrist to me for not having realized that when a local radio station advertises the heck out of a show by playing the new single and then proceeds to charge ten dollars for the event, there will most likely be scads and scads of young'ns, still trying to figure out what that funny taste in their mouth at the end of the night is. It's goodness, kiddos. Good Music. Maybe all of the knickered boys and cat-eyed girls were prowling the streets in hopes of finding whomever it was that stole the Decemberists' trailer/gear and then rendering the offenders to a archaicly stylist yet still bloody pulp. I, however, saved that excursion for today. That said, the show was utterly wonderful, with Safari outfits and the glories of an accordian and violins and some very enthused tambouriners. It was one of those concerts where the only thing I really regretted was that everyone wasn't as into it as I was, and I don't have those nights very often. If they had been, the ballroom would have returned to its former glory as a dancehall, with a cast of thousands (?) swaying and dancing like it was 1899. Or 1929. Or whatever the hell era that band hails from. All of the new songs they played off of Picaresque (look up the definition of that one, dear readers, if you haven't already) were wonderful (with the unfortunate exception of Petra Haden's contribution, which may very well have been excellent if you disregard the fact that I couldn't for the life of me make out what she was singing over the pitch and timbre of her voice.); Infanta, We Both Go Down Together, Eli The Barrow Boy, Sporting Life, (From My Own True Love) Lost at Sea, On the Bus Mall, and the most rollicking of them all; Mariner's Revenge Song. Semi-colons can go to hell. Mariner's Revenge song was probably the highlight of the entire show (if you discount the madly grinning tambourine boy from the opening act; Okkervill River), and it was filled with all the tastiness that I've come to know and love in a Decemberists song, with oaths of anvenging sons, long quests and travails, and even a brief stint in a priory. Foot stamping was encouraged, fancy dancing should have been par for the course for a shantey such as that. I continually wished I had just a bit of whisky in me. In fact, ideally, I would see the Decemberists in a crowd slightly tipsy and all clad in authentic period wear. Ideally. Other notable tracks included Billy Liar, July July, Leslie Ann Levine (which proved a rather morbid sing-along) and Los Angeles I'm Yours, wherein Colin was dissapointed by the crowds' forgetting the first three lines of this O what a rush of ripe elan! Languor on divans Dalliant and dainty! But the smell of burnt cocaine, The dolor and the drain It only makes me cranky but I do believe we made up for it by really knowing the last bit. Who am I kidding? I was shamed. As it was I returned from the show with my feet sore and smelling of a scent that prevails no matter what century you're from...the salty musk of sweat. According to the latest Oprah magazine I accidentally read, if I sweat too profusely and antiperspirants high in aluminum zirconium don't work, I should invest in underarm Botox injections, which block the signals that trigger sweat production. I may need five to ten injections per armpit. Results last six months to a year. Cost per visit: $750 to $1,500. The other flicker in the brightness of the evening was a previously submerged messianic egomania on the part of Colin Meloy, Esq., in the form of his choosing to end the night (post encore) with a lurchingly grandiose performance of "I Was Meant For The Stage." I can empathize that for a man who used to play to little acclaim at The Rabbit Hole back in 1999, selling out a show at the Crystal Ballroom to throngs of radio listeners could quite possibly be his sweet sweet revenge to all those who ignored him in the past, but I didn't know if I really needed to be reminded of it in such a manner, since the person of the song itself is so singular that I think it ignores the accomplishments of the band as a whole. Does that make sense? I would rather a song that spoke of more than just a charicture of the lead singer as a closing finale.

Sudden De-railment:

You know how I think Sam Beam is like if Love were to take human form and make an album about it? Does it then follow that, say, if there was someone who I felt I'd never be able to love, giving them a 10 minute long Iron & Wine song would serve as a surrogate form of emotion towards them? 'Cause I care, I really do, but maybe not as much as I should, and I had this moment where I thought that if I made him a mix cd with that song and some others on it then he could feel something good in regards to me, instead of some sort of negative unrequited affection. It's like the emotion that I can't feel, in a form where he can experience it as much as he wants, pressing play again and again to get his fix of it just like everyone else does.

Tell My Mother Not To Worry

I pull out of the driveway with a crunch of gravel as my wheels turn on the empty country road, and when I point my headlights down the steep hill and look up I can see the mountain silhouetted on the night sky with the first stars coming out flicker by flicker. In the rearview mirror I can still catch the small moving bodies of my parents' dogs darting back and forth black against the glow of the big house windows, jumping up and crossing in front of each other in their eagerness to slather the glass with puppy noses. As I turn left and closer to home Sam Beam is telling me to Fuck the Man with a catch in his breath and he brings to mind occasions past and present which are neither here nor there and I think that if I wanted, on this full moon night, I could flick off my lights and coast silently down these back roads, letting only the sky's ethereal dark guide me. I've done it before, but it's too early tonight, too many people still making their way home, which leaves me wistful at the lost opportunity. In summer it's sheer beauty being ingested, with the windows down and the heavy scent of warm air filling your nostrils like what cocaine should be as you duck up and over hills with the flat of open farmlands stretching away on both sides in wide bands of silver moonlight and golden windows dotting the shadows of houses. The dashboard is dark, the gauges all obscured by night and refusing to light up because of Volvos' notoriously negligent wiring systems. Even if I wanted to know how fast I was going I couldn't tell. Luckily, there's something in this vehicle that makes it too heavy to speed, something that holds it back from accelerating too much for its own good. The only things that show up on the instrument panel are two bright green arrows that point opposite directions, the only options in front of me contradicting each other even though they remain, essentially, exactly the same damn thing. I push the button on the console that lets me hear this song once more, that allows me to pretend the last nine minutes are happening all over again and that none of the decisions I'm making at the wheel are new. The music lulls me as I steer the car, fixing my eyes on the curves ahead of me that I know too well, the gentle slopes of road I can take at 45 miles an hour; a beast of metal in freefall down to where the suburbs crouch waiting to lap with yellow tractor tongues these thick forests and valleys smelling of cold dirt and slowly rotting wood. Fifteen miles later, I merge onto the highway a changed driver, alert once more with the curving of the onramp that serious things are upon me. Navigating evening traffic, I'm a small silver fish maneuvering between the hulking semis that loom above me on all sides, great white whales making their ponderous way north, red brake lights flaring at intervals as they edge too close on one flank or the other. There's a wreck in the lane heading south, and the cars stretch like Christmas lights pulled across the four lanes of the freeway causing slowing in the northbound lanes, as they say, so I cut across to the next exit and make my way northwest through the city blocks one stoplight at a time, stop-and-go through the used car lots and neon signs, through the streetlamps and bicyclists pedaling madly in my periphery. I'm only a few blocks from home when an ambulance turns the corner and heads my way, multi-colored lights strobing, followed closely by a fire truck that blazes blue and red down the city street. I don't realize until they grow close that they've turned off their sirens, choosing instead to plummet soundlessly to their destination, and I thank them for letting me stay in this soft envelope of sound, swaddled in the blackness of my car's interior at the side of the road. I stay pulled over a few more moments then I have to, engine idling and the same track still playing through the two-bit speakers with a short in them, so I only hear one side of the song.

What A Beautiful Life This Mess Can Be

There have been places and events which have benefited me greatly through my attendance, even if they proved uncomfortable at the time of their occurence. Last summer, when I saw the Violent Femmes with Tyler after we had broken up, it was a crazy sort of catharsis. They ended with Kiss Off, or at least it was one of the songs towards the end of the set, and my entire body was wired with a nervous tension that could barely stand existence in a flesh-and-blood body. I was crackling with the frustration and irritation and confusion. It was good, though. Afterward, I was still manic and weird, so it's not that the show fixed anything, by any means, but it provided an outlet that cleansed something out of my system. Now the ice storm and Saul Williams have trumped that to an umpteenth degree. Friday night was Saul Williams at the Portland State Campus, and Erin and I attended, standing at the back of the crowded hall. Tyler detached himself from the faceless masses to join us, and later Matthew appeared at my elbow. The openers were both incredible. Intelligent female spoken word artists who blew me away with every other sentence. They were talking about beauty and love and insecurity and the places we've made for ourself in the world, with words I knew and some I didn't. They peppered their ideas with references to art, music, the Bible, and every time a piece ended I grew more and more excited for what would come next, while trying to remember all the good things they had just said so I could pull them out to think about at a later date. They went too fast, but I was glad to see them. Saul Williams always surprises me on first sight. I forget how dark he is as he emerges onto the stage, and how his slight frame silhouettes itself by its own relative character, even without a spotlight. He is his own shadow. I build him up taller and broader in my mind, in between the shows. He pulled off his sweatshirt, and for a second I thought he was going to literally and metaphorically strip for us up behind the mic. I don't know how to talk about how Saul Williams effects me, really. I always make a point to call it a religious event, and that seems to ring true. The only other thing I could really think of is when you play Boggle. There's the plastic box with the see-through cover, and all of the letters sprawl out on top of the grid, haphazardly turned this way and that. You've got to shake the box back and forth, and then all the letters fall into place and you can start finding the words you need. So many things have seemed ephemeral and confusing for me, lately. The place of art, the place of me, the place of my art. What are friends and how should they be treated? Why do I have the friends I do? Life as a whole was a very large and alarming place, and I was feeling uncertain, even though external events, by all accounts and purposes, felt like they'd be ok. Saul Williams was the hands, I was the Boggle game. When he talks, everything is illuminated, and I have a tactile awareness of the place of the things around me in this world, whether they're physical or not. These are the people I know, and this is what they mean to me and to others and to life as a greater whole. These are the possibilities open to me, these are the responsibilities I have as an individual to create and love. After it ended, all I really wanted to do was talk about the show. I wanted to hear more, I wanted to keep him looping through my head on a hourly basis so I could continually bask in the afterglow of that stunning clarity. Unfortunately, all things of that ilk must climax and then end, and it's up to the individual to take what they need from the experience and live in a way conscious of what has occured. So i went home and listened to my only Saul Williams mp3, Coded Language, about 5 times. The next day was the ice storm, and my first day off in about eighteen days. I was trapped, which i don't mind, for the most part. We decimated the alcohol supply by the end of the day, and wound up rummaging through the cupboards for the last bit of vodka and Kahlua from old bottles. It was cold enough to swear. In other words, every time you go outside, all you can think of to say is "Fuck! It's cold." Live Journal was down, as some of us know, but even that was good for me in its own way, forcing me to find other ways to occupy myself in my confined space. I read. I drew. I talked about writing, and then I wrote. We went to bed late, with a warm buzz in a house that was covered in ice. Today is like the chrysalis splitting, it's like the fresh breath you take after you leave a dark smoky club. It's when it snows, and as you're removing the thick white layers from your car, all of the dirt and grime comes with it, and your car looks cleaner than it has in ages. And I feel that mentally, too. Things are relevant and interesting, and I have a renewed dedication to..to what? I'm not sure how to sum up anything in particular, but I really like Saul Williams, and to have the people that were there with me in the same room while I was feeling all these things meant so much in how the scene plays back. Their proximity weighted the air with a knowledge of what exists between us, and for that matter, what doesn't. On the way to work again today, I had to take it slow over the Fremont Bridge, but it was worth it to look at the city poised beneath me in glistening stillness . I hope it never grows old, my joy in the perspective I get.