That Old Itch

It surfaces again.
A snippet, perhaps the start of something.
Cut me down to size.

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“Enrique Fuentes. Fuentes. Enrique Fuentes.”
The voice chanted over the hospital loudspeaker.

A frail old man made his way to the triage window and was directed down the hall by the silent, extended finger of the nurse. He walked slowly and with a slight hunch, his right hand trembling. A doctor waited at the end of the hall; holding open the thick, bulletproof glass door and tapping his feet. I watched the old man disappear through the glass door and looked over at the triage nurse. She filed her nails in a tiny room full of stethoscopes, thermometers and blood pressure devices. The man next to me coughed a loud, hacking cough and pressed a clenched fist to his chest. I scratched at the hard pink plastic of my chair. The television suspended in the corner played a "Taxi" rerun. A woman paced across the black and white tiled floor. She pushed a granny cart containing a tiny television set and a box of cereal. Her left arm hung loose at her side at a strange angle. She smacked her lips loudly and occasionally stood very still with her eyes rolling back in her head. The TV let out a roar of canned laughter.

“Alright amigo, time to go.”

A stocky, bow-legged cop strutted in and rousted a lanky Hispanic man from his seat. The cop did this every hour and a half or so, dutifully kicking the man out. When the cop was gone the man would come back to sit and eat and watch television until the cop returned and put him back on the street. They seemed to have some silent understanding about this routine, and went about it in the manner of co-workers – calmly, wearily, not making a show of it.

The cop flirted with the triage nurse. The limp-armed woman rattled her granny cart and muttered to herself. Someone stood up and changed the channel on the television. I glanced down the hall and saw Olivia coming through the glass door with a female doctor at her side gently gripping her arm.

She was wearing clothes that were not her own. I stood up and took an awkward step forward then stopped. She was delayed at the triage window, the doctor was talking to her quietly and a pair of cops came up from behind, waiting their turn. The doctor handed her some papers and pill bottles. Olivia leaned against the counter and put pen to the papers then handed them back to the doctor who turned away with a final squeeze of Olivia’s shoulder. The cops handed over another group of papers, which Olivia also signed, and spoke to her for a minute. I couldn’t hear what they said but I was struck by the difference in manner between these two figures of authority, doctor and policeman – the one deferential and pitying, the other affecting an air of stern reassurance. I just stood there, with the television chattering and the sick man hacking in the background, waiting for the cops to finish saying whatever it was they were saying.

Olivia came over.

“They kept my clothes for evidence.” She wore a pair of baggy sweats and an oversized v-neck sweater.

“Is there anything you need?” I asked. It was a stupid thing to say.

“Just home.”

I reached into my pocket for my phone and dialed a cab.

"The time of life is short, and if we live, we live to tread on kings"

Recent topic of discussion: the need to do away with this world of organized boredom.

The setting: Camp Bar, Smith St. & Warren, sipping perhaps the purest expression of insular escape, the crowd most likely richer than I. (charity drink from a friend) counting change. ticking down minutes till payday. ones and zeroes. a unified field theory of longing. and don't forget the hatred. it can be pure, and there are those who deserve no sympathy, and no forgiveness. (we just want to be in the right so desperately)

The question: are my life's ambitions so completely and utterly selfish as to render me the worst kind of hypocrite? or do we fight the battles where we can, in the ways we're best suited?

another drink, please. & i'll be in love with everything in an hour.

Night and Day and Then Night Again

"Now without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it."

The curves and angles come into focus

Received the master in the post yesterday from Mr. Mark Berlin. It's incredible. The man is a genius. My heart broke listening back to it for the 1st time as a complete entity, and as an exterior, objective listener. It's very odd to hear your own songs from that objective position, but I liked it, and everything sounds great and flows great. I'm gonna cry because this has been 6 months of hard work and sore troats and late nights and bloody fingers and panic attacks and tons of money burned, and I can say, honestly, that is was worth it, and it feels good. I hope people like it. We'll have copies available for purchase next week, via some online arrangement, and will be making a trip up to Pittsburgh to play a show on Saturday April 1st - Fool's Day, and we are nothing if not blind, raging fools, but hey, we love what we do.

Next up in NY is the Record Release Extravaganza, which I can exclusively reveal to you (being one who is in the know about these things) right now as going something like this:

On Saturday May 6th at Pianos, ourselves and Liberated Matter will be hosting a record release for the ages, featuring a host of great artists handpicked by us and Liberated Matter. The lineup is as follows:

Kinetic
Undisputed Heavyweights
Hula
Wynn Walent
El Jezel

Wynn Walent will also be celebrating his record release that night, and all the other bands are fantastic, so mark your calendars, it will be one to remember. More details as they arrive.

Be well and don't let the bastards get you down.

The Minor Horrors of the Modern World

So my boss(es) have finally started cracking the whip over my constant lateness. Yet even when I try to get here on time, something thwarts me, usually the trains. The R should be renamed the 5 MPH Train, and today's ride was greatly enhanced by the screaming maniacal child in my car. Pity the poor father but he seemed like a moron and this kid just wouldn't quit: "NO! NOOO! NO NO! NOOO!!!" over and over and over, red in the face, squirming all over the seat. It was hideous.

In other news, my fantasy baseball drafts are complete and I am quite pleased with my teams, it's still fucking cold, and the creditor wolves are pounding on my door, but I won't let them get to me, oh no no no.

I don't understand the appeal of AC/DC.

Cranky Addendum

There’s an obvious preponderance of 90s albums on this little list I’ve got going, and that owes mainly to it being the era in which I came of age, but I also think, without sounding too artificially “it was better in the old days” about it, that there was more exciting, ambitious music being made then, especially within the rubric of “independent/alternative rock.” Modern indie diversity is great, but I think it masks with numbers what is in reality a rather limited vocabulary. There are more artists practicing in more styles, but within those styles things are pretty limited. From ’93 to ’99 you could watch the Afghan Whigs morph from a slash and burn guitar band to a practical soul combo. I really like Interpol and all, but I don’t see much room for a similar development of their style. If anything, a lot of bands, especially bands like Interpol who rose to status on an iconic first album, seem to retreat in their subsequent releases and scale back their ambitions. From what I’ve listened to so far, I’m concerned the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will follow the same route.

I attribute it to the influence of the market. Success is more readily attained with an identifiable, easily categorized style, even if that style is already saturating the market – witness the continued proliferation of “dance-punk” bands. And within the indie market, where bands can spin off a moderately successful (if probably brief) career by catering to a ghettoized fanbase, there is ironically less musical ambition than there was when all the “alternative” bands were on major labels. This is, I think, for two reasons. One, indie careers are limited and not hugely profitable, so people take the sure road to success. And second, I think people are very concerned about maintaining their “indie cred” and are therefore afraid to go out on a limb. God forbid Pitchfork might give them a bad review!

I hope that this mini-era of gimmickry and rote stylizing doesn’t last too much longer, but I’m not holding my breath. After all, even people I respect are agog over Editors...

Albums To Live By, Part Two

Mojave 3 – Ask Me Tomorrow
Everybody knows what happened in New York in 2001. Still, I’m amazed even now when I think back at just how miserable everything was for that entire autumn and winter. That December there was only one album – this one. One of the very few albums that I’d rate as perfect, this is a heartbreaking, sublime marriage of songwriting and atmosphere, full of sighing, morning after ambiance. It’s an album I have to handle carefully, because from the moment I put it on I experience a near-overwhelming swell of emotion, particularly if the weather is right, or my body and mind are feeling particularly ragged. I really, really hope that it never loses that power to destroy me, I’m not sure I could make it if it did.

Blinker the Star – August Everywhere
I said there was only one album in December 2001 but I was lying. This was a few years old at that point, but it was then that I got really into it. The first CD I bought after moving to NY (well, not counting a Radiohead bootleg from Generation Records), it has the glow of late summer sunshine to it, and I guess in ’01 it also carried the memory of a time only a few years previous when things didn’t seem so dark and hopeless. I’m not quite as sensitive with it as with Mojave 3, but it’s beautifully layered arrangements and aching harmonies get to me still.

Flaming Lips – Clouds Taste Metallic
Not to belittle the achievements of Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, but this is my favorite Lips record, and I dare say that they had a certain flair here that was diminished by the sophistication of later efforts. It’s the exploding, energetic randomness that I miss – the collision of colossal drums, church bells and noisy, joyously out-of-tune guitar at the end of “The Abandoned Hospital Ship,” the plinking toy xylophone that pops up out of the blue for about 5 seconds in the otherwise riff-rocking “Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saved the World.” Maybe losing Ronald Jones meant losing the guitar madness, and if so that’s a huge shame, because on this album and Transmissions From the Satellite Heart he shows himself to be one of the most inventively madcap guitarists around. The massive, My Bloody Valentine-like maelstrom kicked up on “Kim’s Watermelon Gun” would be almost frightening if it weren’t surrounding such a giddy pop tune (about killing celebrities no less!). From what I’ve heard of the new Lips record, Wayne Coyne has dropped his vocal range a bit and is singing in key, and I think that’s a shame too. Nothing’s more enjoyable than hearing him warble wonderful melodies that are just a notch out of his range, and in the 90s he and Malkmus and Dulli formed the Holy Trifecta of Great Bad Singers. Down with professionalism!

Albums To Live By

Mogwai - Young Team
It'd be worth it just for "Mogwai Fear Satan," a song that, when I first heard it, seemed to encapsulate exactly the kind of music I always wanted to hear - murderously rocking, unrelenting, noisy, but also painfully beautiful and imbued with a sense of urgency that makes you want to quit your job and run down the street yelling with joy. But in addition you get all the peaks and valleys you could ever want; fucked-up, stereo panning noise experiments, delicate guitar & glockenspiel ballads, and of course "Like Herod," the aural equivalent of some shock scene in a Japanese horror film. This album makes the guitar interesting again, always an impressive feat.

Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
In 2000 I was an exhausted, drugged-up, heart-broken college freshman. This record gave me a reason to exist. It perfectly expressed all my disgust and contempt for the people, beauracracies and institutions around me, and within a sonic template that was nothing short of revolutionary - danceable, textured, aggressive and alive. I remember walking through Central Park some murky March afternoon listening to "Swastika Eyes" over and over again, as if its lazer-sighted aggro-disco could somehow will Spring into existence and kill evil men all at once.

Sonic Youth - Sister
I'm still amazed at how fresh and great this is. I bought it (on cassette!) because Kurt Cobain name-dropped them in that Come As You Are book. But my ears were infantile then! It all sounded a strange, horrible mess coming out of my Walkmen headphones, albeit with some queer, undeniable allure. By the time I gave it a serious second chance, Kurt was dead and I had exhausted the re-playability of "Insecticide." But funny things can happen given time! Suddenly it all made sense, the melody coming through the mayhem, the sheer inventiveness of the guitar playing, and don't forget the goddamn rawk! of it all. Soon I was downloading SY tunings from OLGA (anyone remember that shit?) and buying everything they put out. I still own all their albums and will continue buying whatever they put out until I (or they) die.

Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot
It's not even a proper album, but something about it captures the essence of a particular period of time, of my youth, of summers without care, all the agony and ecstasy of those mangled years from 13-17. Back then Billy Corgan and Co. were like the Super Band of all bands, playing all the right cards and with a seemingly limitless stylistic breadth. The girly vocals over skull-crushing guitars and assault rifle drums were sweet revenge for anyone ever called "fag" in high school, and it was heartening to see a band so odd achieve mega-success. Certainly there's nobody fucking like that around today. Unlike a lot of people, I really like "Mellon Collie" and the stuff that came afterward, but in my heart I do wish they had followed down the path so promisingly outlined here.

Cracked Mirrors

Sometimes, when I read music blogs, I feel like this entire project of ours is utterly futile. Everyone is so busy trying to out-cool each other, it makes me sick, and I don't have the energy or inclination to try and win these people over. The funniest thing is the willful ignorance on the part of the blogerati as to just what brings all these bands to their attention (i.e. $$$ and publicists), allowing them to debate their relative hipness and sincerity. It's an industry, and one of the more disgusting ones at that, and the most honest people involved with it that I've encountered are the ones who say "just grab whatever money you can and run with it," a position I personally find abhorrent. You're looking for irony, try that on for size.

In other news, I am having a love affair with this weather.

Resolutions

I will acknowledge the fear, accept it, and move past it.
I will recognize each individual victory, however small, and use it as a positive step.
I will know that I am alive and that this is not going to change anytime soon.
I will set small goals, complete them, and be happy about it.
Relax, relax, relax. Every moment of every day, relax.

This Side of Paradise

They walk Brooklyn streets on a cold and windy weekend afternoon, her arm in his, like two broken down characters in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

Tightly Wound

Yesterday I had the worst panic attack I've experienced in years. It's not at all surprising, being the culmination of a steady-simmer, fulminating anxiety that's been hanging around since, jesus i dunno since when. Months now. But now I am afraid of trains and I can't go to work. It's 6AM and I'm wide awake, actually feeling somewhat alright, after having failed to get to sleep because of the racing heartbeat and stiff chest. I was debating going to the hospital, but it seems like such a hassle. I called various medical establishments today, to try to set up an appointment or consultation, or something, but one said "we don't take your insurance" and hung up and the others were all booked or their admitting attendant wasn't in until Monday. I love American healthcare. i used to have a prescription for Klonopin and would take one if a panic attack manifested itself, but I let the prescription run out because I felt better and the pills themselves had a kind of anxiety attached to them. but I could sure use one right now, chamomile tea only gets you so far. I'd just like to sleep. That'd really be nice. Yeah.

Lions & Lambs

It's still cold, but there's a definite feeling of spring in the air. I'm finely attuned to these things.

Last night I looked at the artwork Dave is preparing for the album. It made me really happy. I think it's gonna look really nice and give the whole thing an atmosphere. It's cool to see the disparate tendrils starting to come together on this long, insane project we've undertaken. I can't wait to hold the first copy in my hand. I'm gonna indulge a little here in the sin of pride. I think it's a damn good album, I hope people like it.

The new Liars record is pretty good, as is that Celebration album. I never really cared for Liars before, but the new one is interesting, somehow atmospheric and primal at the same time. I feel like Celebration are a flip side of the same coin, just a little more careening. The 3rd and 4th tracks are especially excellent, and sounded great walking to Steph's place in the cold and howling wind Sunday night. Those also happen to be the songs where guitars first appear. I just like guitars I guess, so sue me.

I'm discovering how much more there is to George Orwell than Animal Farm and 1984. Down and Out In Paris and London reminds me of my days of unemployment living in Washington Heights, scrounging whatever money I could to eat and drink, and reversing my sleeping patterns so as never to see the sun. It was stressful, but in a weird way I was much happier than I am now, with steady job and health insurance. To be completely in control of one's own time is very liberating, even if you don't have money. You learn to live without it anyway.

I've been meaning to say this, but I saw Hula a week or two ago, for the first time in too long a time, and they're still excellent. Highly recommended.