Andrew Bird @ the Venue - February 25, 2009

Got to the show a bit late and had to cantilever Chiara and I into a riser on the balcony. Had to balance on one foot, supported with a hand levered against some kind of smudgy ceiling strut to see anything. Finally eked out enough space to both breathe and stand just in time for the opener to go on.

Loney, Dear was that opener. They are a sort of Jens Lekman cum Belle and Sebastian outfit (as, indeed, one might expect a Swedish band to be) but perhaps not so precious as the sum of those two parts. I was utterly charmed. I liked them well enough to come home and buy their most recent album.

As is usually the case when rushing into a purchase of an opening band's record, I was somewhat disappointed by the studio versions of the songs that had seemed so lively to me in person. Oh well. Was still a very nice opening set and set the stage quite well for Andrew Bird.

So Andrew Bird is is like the terminator designed by Wes Anderson. He whistles, he skinny ties, he goes shoeless on stage, he plays violin and is enamored of electronic beats and samples. It's a hipster wet dream if one is the sort of hipster who wears sport coats and listens to NPR.

Guilty.

The set was a good mix of material from his new album, Noble Beast, and most of his other records from the past six years or so. They are all of a kind, all as quirky, melodic, and enjoyable as the next. The audience was engaged and I felt happy being there. There was nothing to surprise me, having seen him live before, but for those of you who have not, his routine deserves to be explained.

So Andrew Bird is a sort of indie-folk version of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins - you know, in the scene where he has the one man band apparatus on. Bird plays, as I've already mentioned, the violin, but he also plays the guitar, the vibraphone, and, in the sense that it can be played, his clarion whistle. On top of all that, his drummer runs the sample board while drumming, his bassist plays the saxophone and the clarinet and his second guitarist--well, he just played the guitar, really.

But, because he can't possibly play all of these at once (why not try strapping the drumkit to your inner thighs and the vibes to your lower back says I) he employs an array of stomp boxes the likes of which I've never seen. He'll play a brief bit of music on the violin and hit the stomp box to loop it. Then, he'll play another refrain and loop that. Then, he'll pluck a melody line on the violin and loop that. He might whistle a few seconds of something and loop that. Eventually, he'll play some chords on his beautiful Gibson Les Paul and loop those before finally settling in to the lead guitar bit and the singing of the song, all the while backed by a piece of music seven or eight players deep - all of which are he and his three bandmates.

So every song is a stereophonic palimpsest and half the fun for the audience is watching (and hearing) the thing being built and then controlled throughout by Andrew incessantly jabbing at the row of buttons arranged at in front of him with his socked feet, bringing back or silencing little snippets of music he put down live at the beginning of the number. Its a great show and one can't help but appreciate the effort when so many would have just prerecorded whatever samples they might need and played them the same every night. Add to all of this the fact that his voice is soaringly better live than on record - a kind of arch version of Jeff Buckley's morose but exquisitely controlled wail - and I think anyone would say they had been to a great show.

Cairo to Capetown via Curmudgeon

I once rented from Netflix a documentary series starring Michael Palin in which he traveled from Cairo to Capetown overland. It was warm and funny and humane and fascinating. The roads were shit (and worse), the boats and trains were dilapidated and slow, the food looked awful, and the nations through which one must travel in such a journey were (and still are) in terrible condition socially, politically, economically, environmentally, and medically. Still, Michael Palin's charms and Africa's splendors are such that I was envious of him and of his adventure. So it was with that interest intact, along with my own limited experience with the continent, that I dived with gusto into Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari.

There are really only so many ways one can go from Cairo to Capetown overland (it is, afterall, a journey in only one direction), so Theroux and Palin visited many of the same locales. The two men's journeys could not, however, have been more different or more differently portrayed.

Palin is an affable traveler most of the time. He is, of course, a famous funnyman, British, and possessed of a calm, sunny disposition. Theroux is none of those things; he is the most famous misanthrope in the bookstore. He seems, at times, to hate everyone - especially fellow travelers, westerners, and intellectuals. At literally every opportunity he reminds the reader how much he loathes his life in the west, with its telephones and computers and familial obligations and how much he prefers the worst hovels and mudholes of a backwater village in the middle of nowhere. He hates beuraucrats with a passion, and loves the authenticity of decay, disorder, and defeat. Almost the only thing he and Palin have in common is their abiding love for their subject. Theroux, at the end of all of it, loves Africa deeply and personally and because of (not in spite of) its faults.

Theroux, for all his bile and condescension, is a fabulous writer. He can capture a place and a moment and a populace in a thousand ways, and none ever repeated or overused to the point of stereotype or cliche. He goes places most people don't want or feel safe to go and he goes there traveling routes noone would take - almost gleefully traveling wherever he is warned not to travel.

Reading the book, you get chaotic Arabic Africa, truly weird Ethiopian Africa, defeated and dangerous east Africa, failing central Africa, and prosperous (if emotionally dead) South Africa. You get the flavor of each of these places whole clove, and you get the sort of vignettes that you don't soon forget, though you're glad they aren't yours.

I hate Paul Theroux. Or anyway, I'd hate to be trapped in an elevator or a dinner party with him, but I dearly love his writing and his nomadic spirit. He's Anthony Bourdain without the self aggrandisement and posturing. He's V.S. Naipaul with a bias against his own culture instead of that he visits. He's mean spirited, cantankerous, ironic, keenly observant, and a really wonderful travel writer. If you have a thing for Africa, or just for travel books in general, this is one of the best.

Romance!

A quick update before I hop into the shower to have a drink. (who's gonna know?)

Chiara and I have apparently reached a point in our relationship where, when she comes home from work on Valentine's Day and finds me wearing pants, she asks me "Deed you go somewhere today?" in a suspicious tone.

I told her I had to get dressed for when the police came.

Homeless for the Holidays (At My House!)

One year, while living alone in a little house I rented, I had a Halloween party.

In the early part of the evening I stayed in and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters and, because I was forever opening and shutting the door anyway, I didn't bother to lock it in between candy out-handing.

So I could hardly have been surprised when the seven foot tall homeless man, stinking of whiskey and pee (and of clothes washed in whiskey and pee) burst through my door and into my living room to "get away from the dude who stole [his] bike!"

At first I tried to humor him. Pretended to look outside. Told him I didn't see the guy he was running from - that the coast was clear. Somehow he took this elaborate pantomime as an invitation to sit on (and forever mar the smell of) my sofa.

He grabbed my phone off the coffee table and punched a long succession of numbers. While he sat there, fidgeting, holding the receiver against his head as though waiting while it rang on the other end, he told me he was calling the C.I.A.

When he finally got through to the C.I.A. he asked to speak with Mr. Santos.

He became enraged when he was, apparently, told that Mr. Santos had been transferred to another department and that they did not have a contact number. The homeless man held the phone away from his face and shouted into it "I ride with Jesus on a rickshaw!"

This all ended predictably, with me pushing my head into his chest in order to get him out the door, like trying to get an elephant onto an airplane.

So all that was years ago. The reason I mention it is that I am, apparently, the nexus in some cosmic relationship between the wheel of the year and drunken vagrantism.

Today, Valentine's Day, I received a telephone call from my delightful French neighbor, informing me that a drunken man was sleeping on my front porch (a sentence that sounds surprisingly sophistique in a French accent).

I laughed. Imagine if I'd gone to get the mail this afternoon. How long had he been there? As it was I had wandered by the front window half a dozen times today without seeing his sack-like body slumped in my Adirondack chair. But the sun was on him and he was sound asleep, drunk as a fish, blissfully unaware of my presence as I peered at him through the glass.

I wish I'd thought to take a photo before the police came. I called Eric to tell him about the whole thing and he didn't answer. If he had, he told me later, he would have convinced me to decorate the guy with tinsel and string - as a Valentine's Day gift for Chiara.

"Because that's a gift you can't buy in a store," he said.

As it was, I did the safer thing and just called the police.

In three minutes they had nine officers and four paramedics there. It was ridiculous.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially after they determined that the guy was basically okay - just hammered. They led him away and I got a picture of that. They would take him to a detox shelter and they said he would be fine. They handcuffed him, though. That seemed a shame.

Still, they told me as they were leaving that he was just out of prison - on parole for only two days. So maybe a good thing I didn't put glitter on his face after all, Eric.

One odd note more - after the cops took the drunk guy away from my house, I went outside to sniff the wet spot on the chair (only water - I think) and I checked the mailbox. The mail carrier had come and gone while the dude was passed out on my porch. I have to ask him about this the next time I see him. It won't be awkward, I have to talk to him anyway. For some reason we've stopped receiving the lingerie catalogs the previous owners received at this address and something has to be done, recession or no.

Somewhere, a Pair of Black Panties are Unidentifiable

Yes, you will tell me that there are scores of reasonable explanations, but fuck you.

I went to get into my car today and I saw this on the asphalt nearby.

Is it a Hello, my name is sticker, do you think?

I would lay money that it's in a woman's hand - so the chances of it being ironic or jocular are somewhat reduced. But could she have so many as to need a label just for these? Who labels articles of clothing this way, anyhow?

The mysteries are legion. Also, it kinda turned me on.

I think it would make a perfectly good album cover someday.

Playing with Dolls

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I wanted to "review" movies on this blog.

For one thing, I see so many of them. For another, I seldom have anything terribly interesting to say about them afterward. I'm plenty good at discussing things I liked about them in conversation, but every time I've tried to write about a film it has come off as either bloviation or bathos.

So here is my compromise with myself: I will try to do a blog about movies I see in the theatre, but not the scads of them arriving every month from Netflix or flickering late at night on the movie channels of my cable subscription. Moreover, I will try to just write a few words about each film.

Starting with the first film I saw in 2009, Coraline.

The first thing to be said is that it was great. The second is to gape slack-jawed at you (as best I can in text) in imitation of my reaction to the 3-D in which I saw the movie.

I don't know when this 3-D thing started to be legitimate, but I had no fucking idea. I was amazed and filled with real wonderment just watching this already beautiful film. You have to see it to believe it.

As for the film itself - creepy and memorable and visually stimulating while simultaneously tripping enough of the switches in our collective consciousness to have some real resonance.

For some reason, what sticks with me most (other than the eerie uncomfortableness it trucks in) is the lighting. There are so many light sources in every scene, some from in world sources (which are often weird and wonderful), and some from just out of frame, and they all bathe the film in a changeable light palette - sometimes cool and sepulchral and sometimes warm and languorous. The way the film uses the lighting to communicate mood is subtle and stirring and deserves to be paid attention to while you're in the theatre being wowed by the movement and the 3-D.

It isn't a perfect film, but the stop-motion animation is the best I've ever seen and the story stays with you after you leave the theatre. What more can you ask of it?

So, I say see it.

Perfect, Inspired by Perfect

I admit, up front, that it is entirely possible that the only reason I liked this well enough to post it here is that I am deep in the thrall of medicine head, buried under fathoms of Nyquil. Still, she does seem to get it, doesn't she?

Video found by someone at Buzzfeed.

Redoubtful, But a Nice Idea

Upon learning of the imminent volcanic eruption in Alaska, Chiara said:

"Good. Maybe we can finally keell Sarah Palin een lava."

Stay safe, rest of Alaska. We love you down here when you aren't Palining up the joint.

Videos Can Be Odd

Peter Bjorn and John "Nothing To Worry About"

Jeff versus Owls

Someone's dream of owls reminded me:

Once, years ago, on leaving a woman's house in the wee hours just before dawn, I walked to where I had parked my (convertible) car. There, perched on the steering wheel, was a small black owl, more or less the size and shape of a coke can.

I paused in the deserted street and watched it for a moment.

I slunk closer and closer, gripping my keys in my fist to prevent their jangling.

When I drew near enough that a lunge could have allowed me to touch it, it fluttered away into an overhanging tree. I watched for a moment and then pulled myself into my car, drowsy and anxious to get home to sleep away the day.

Just as I was shoving the key into the ignition I was smacked in the head by what I was sure was a rudely thrown pinecone.

But, as evidenced by the muffled flutter of wings in the branches above me, I had, in fact, been divebombed by an owl.

Another owl. Perhaps the mate of the one who had been sitting on my steering wheel. In any case, I lept out of my car and stood in slack-jawed shock in the middle of the road.

When I felt sure the little owls were going to stay put, I sauntered back to the car. This time I saw it coming and ducked.

One of the little, yellow-eyed terrors just clutched at the hairs on top of my head as it went past. I screamed or laughed (or both at the same time). I ran back to the girl's front door and knocked until she answered, already half asleep and now in only her underwear.

After a minute of convincing her that I was in earnest, she followed me into the street while I tried to find the owls in the tree. We must have stood there for three or four minutes, me gesticulating wildly and shouting in the now pinkish dawn, her in her panties and t-shirt, clutching herself underneath her breasts from the cold. Eventually, she assured me that she believed me, but begged off witnessing anything in favor of bed. Reluctantly, I let her go, sure that she thought I was exaggerating at best and lying at worst.

Just as she turned to go - pinecone to the back of the head.

I shout. Girl turns. Girl sees owl flying back into tree, away from the general area of my cranium. Girl sees self-satisfied Jeff, thrilled to have provided evidence of mad owl instead of owl madness.

She ended up standing there, jumping up and down and waving her arms - distracting the vicious things - long enough for me to jump in my car and speed away.

I often think about those stupid owls. What did they want with my car?

Hypnopop - February 5, 2009

I suppose I must have had this song in my head this morning because of their upcoming sophomore album, but I don't know why it would have been this particular song. I haven't heard it in months and months. Anyway:


Peter, Bjorn, and John

"Amsterdam"

Writer's Block

The Old New Pornographer

They're going to reissue Serge Gainsbourg's album Histoire de Melody Nelson on March 24.

Start saving up your cigarettes, red wine, and warming lotions.

Monsieur Gainsbourg (father of Charlotte, fucker of Brigitte Bardot) remains the epitome of dirty sexy cool. Perhaps only Prince has approached the depravity and simultaneous musicality.

Strike that. Prince far exceeds Gainsbourg, musically - but no matter how many women Prince has been with, you don't quite want to be Prince.

In any case, Melody Nelson is (vaguely) an album about pedophilia (or, more properly, ephebophilia) and whatever other sexual deviance Gainsbourg can dream up a way to mumble through a cigarette about and string drenched, slinky French Pop over for half an hour. This is all accomplished with help from his onetime wife and all-time hottie, Jane Birkin on backing vocals. She also does a turn porning it up in the videos released in support of the album.

It is all just too great to summarize and dance around. I'll post a clip.

And, wouldn't you know it - all the clips on YouTube have their embedding disabled. But here are a couple of links:

Ballade de Melody Nelson

L'hotel Particulier

Steve Miller Can Suck It

The embedding is disabled on this one, but please please please please please follow the link to Johnny Guitar Watson's original version of "Gangster of Love."

You won't (couldn't) be disappointed. He gives it the slink, the groove, the crotch-grabbing grit, and the sex that a song called "Gangster of Love" really ought to have in any sane universe.

Only watch out for those lapels . . . they could put your eye out.

Hypnopop - February 1, 2009

Seems just about right to wake up with the following song in one's head on Candlemas:


Fleet Foxes

"Drops in the River"

Sun Giant