Yet again I found myself on Steve’s porch in the middle of the night. That’s not the first place I found myself. Of course I couldn’t get ahold of Kevin when I was supposed to meet up with him for his birthday party, so I drove down to Clintonville and got a PBR at Bourbon Street and pretended to read that pretentious literary journal n+1 that I’ve been trying to get into forever. Boys in bands are loading in, and I turn around and there’s Danielle sitting at a table in the middle of the room, by herself. She’s back from the Amazon, and it seems almost like she never left, but that could possibly be because every time I see her it’s in the dim dirty light of Bourbon Street. We’re talking just as my phone rings wtih a mysterious Columbus area code. Kevin’s at Steve’s. Dave appears carrying an amp. “Are you guys going?” Danielle seems reluctant, and I wonder, did she come to the bar randomly just to sit by herself?
It’s no surprise when we get to Steve’s apartment next door that a bowl is being passed around. Danielle and I sit on the floor at the feet of all those skinny Ohio guys that are always around. Kevin gets me whiskey, or as Steve calls it when he’s drunk (in his booming, yet vaguely effeminate voice) “WHIKKEYY!” It’s always good to see Kevin. We watch an episode of Girls Behaving Badly that Steve has taped off of cable, and he tells us about a controversial episode where one wayward girl seeks revenge on the other by peeing in the kitchen sink. I had no idea this show even existed, and my hopes at one day appearing on it are quickly dashed by the realization that the current cast is comprised of women with records or illegitimate Mexican children.
I met the singer of that band that we ended up seeing in Steve’s kitchen. He’s an eighth grade history teacher, but he’s all shifty-eyed and spazzy when we do shots. He talks about how he occasionally identifies kids who are tripping in class and he close-talks and drinks water loudly in front of their faces to freak them out. Who does acid then goes to history class? Dave and Kevin talk about their first time doing acid, when they somehow ended up laying in Steve’s front yard. Steve’s had one too many bad acid trips, and he swore that if he ever found his friends tripping he would fuck with them. Dave freaked out and tried to play it cool. Kevin forgot the whole thing. This kid with curly hair talked about being tweaked out for days then showing up at parties shouting “I’ve got crack in my socks!”
But the show. The show was great. Dave plays guitar like a Midwesterner; he’s raw and controlled at the same time. The history teacher screamed and jumped around on stage, ran through the audience, bit at his friends’ fingers when they pointed at him from the front row. There was something about that show that made me want to come back to New York and tell everyone here that I have a million friends in a million awesome bands who would probably think that all you all are assholes.
Sitting on Steve’s porch in the middle of the night, just me and him and Danielle, he asks me, “Do you know Danielle? She’s the coolest girl in Columbus.” And I wonder if I could’ve been something like that, had I stuck around.
I was getting all geared up to put my salty, I-Hate-My-Job anger into bitching about L Magazine music editor Mike Conklin, but doing some preliminary internet research, I came across his Myspace page and found pictures of him drinking beer, enjoying the presence of cats, and eating a late night beef patty, all of which could be considered my own personal weekly must-haves. Mike Conklin is a human being, who, much to my dismay, is actually a lot like me.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the L Magazine. For the most part I feel like the snarky culturati approach they take to their reviews and articles is abrasive and unfounded. But when I came face to face with an article written by the already questionable Conklin about the new uberband Vampire Weekend, I was pushed over the edge. In a piece entitled “Year of the Vampire: The Best Album of 2007 is Finally Out,” Conklin seeks to justify his almost desperate love for the preppy Brooklyn quartet by calling them, of all things, revloutionary.
Granted, Conklin was already pretty much on my hate list ever since his picks for Best NYC Bands 2007 came out this summer and featured, count it 3 women and 1 person of color. And really, how hard is it to figure out that people are really into the Muggabears, My Teenage Stride, and yes, he called it, Vampire Weekend? Not to mention the fact that in an article of his holiday gift choices, while simultaneously accusing Sasha Frere-Jones of being racist, he picked the De Capo series’ Best Music Writing 2007, and basically said that it was only a good gift for guys, because there aren’t music nerds who are women. As a music nerd (who happens to be a woman), I’ve noticed this trend in Conklin’s writing, not so different from the writing in Frere-Jones’ stupid, but also overblown article “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” of being incredibly myopic in order to prove a vague, self-serving and ill-defined point.
Bitch holds a grudge.
The essence of Conklin’s Vampire Weekend article is that the group proves to be so successful as a band for a narrowly defined set of reasons. One, they exist outside the influence of the music (and according to Conklin the painfully traditional rock music) around them. Two, they are doing something new in that they are a four piece band with a preppy look who have a live show in which they keep the audience in their place.
Well, okay, how exactly does Vampire Weekend exist so exclusively outside the music around them when Conklin mentions their appropriation of Afrobeat explicitly? Could this not be described as a larger trend in indie rock, specifically NYC-based indie rock, to explore a variety of influences, like TV on the Radio and Yeasayer do? Vampire Weekend, critical darling of everyone, is being, in my opinion unjustly, isolated in this amazing music environment that is NYC 2008. And if anyone should know that, it’s Conklin. Besides their actual music, their meticulous Cape Cod aesthetic has been touted by various critics, but I fail to see what exactly Conklin finds so revolutionary about it. They are 4 white dudes who dress like everyone else I see on Bedford Avenue. Comparing Vampire Weekend to Arcade Fire, Conklin argues that there is a trend in indie music to have large bands with interactive performances, thus making Vampire Weekend’s straightforward line-up and live show audience/performer dichotomy somehow revolutionary. But how can anyone argue that this format ever changed? Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, like Arcade Fire, and maybe even Brooklyn’s own LCD Soundsystem and O’Death, but for the most part, Vampire Weekend is part of the dominant majority of the NYC music scene.
It’s no big deal. Vampire Weekend is really good, but for different reasons. Their music is fairly simple and amazingly poppy, but pretty interesting despite that. And their lyrics… What’s great about their lyrics is that it’s like being set down in the middle of a Wilt Stillman film, with the tenderness for characters and the sense of humor and absurdity that Conklin seems to be missing in his review.
But I forgive you, Mike Conklin. Let’s get drunk and wake up with beff patty stuck in our teeth.
The days following my graduation have found me in a perpetual state of agitation. Right before commencement I got offered a job at a company in Midtown writing educational and professional work reports for people who are applying for green cards. Discovering that I had but one free week before being locked down in a 9 to 5 that will require a lot of overtime, I committed myself to finishing another draft of my screenplay, writing that article I’ve been meaning to about Kevin’s band and trying to get some writing samples ready for my supposed venture into freelancing.
But instead, I found myself sitting on the couch staring straight ahead possessed by the near tangible apparition of My Life In The Future, which to me appeared as a series of crappy and frustrating low paying jobs, crappy and low rent apartments, a perpetual feeling of failure ergo never feeling fulfilled in any relationships that I may have.
In this spirit I found myself on the train staring straight ahead at an advertisement for the Philosophy Works workshops. Feeling depressed? Want to know the meaning of it all? Yes, yes I am and Yes I do. How did you know? But catching myself falling prey to this marketing scheme designed to take advantage of the marginally educated, I entered a state of reverie about the idea of philosophy in general. It was an aesthetic philosophy class in my sophomore year at School of Visual Arts that made me decide what I needed was a more diverse education and led me to transfer to Hunter. I was ass deep in philosophy for the rest of my time at SVA and in the interval in between my colleges. Then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t. And I realized that to think about life in the metalanguage that philosophy creates is to take some of the pleasant randomness and sense of disorder that really living life produces. Thinking a lot about life makes life unbearable to live, and I know this because I’ve spent a few days now sitting on my couch and thinking about it.
Then for some reason I started to think about the 19th century. I’ve been pretty invested in the greatness that is the 19th century novel, mostly because the ones I like are about the class of people who sit around and talk about interesting things, agonize in their decisions and social obligations and who think a lot about a lot of things. Diego has equally been into the 19th century novel, which made me think that maybe Diego and I were made for the 19th century, when as he puts it, “women were women and men were women.” And just like some of the best 19th century novels, we will live our lives in obscurity.
I am secretly a big schlocky sap. Maybe not so secretly, but definitely, definitely sappy. I realized when I touched down in DC for my layover on the way back to New York, that I always get a little bit choked up when a plane lands, when the flight attendant says “Welcome to Washington DC (or Columbus or Portland, or, yes, New York). The local time is 8:30.” I can’t really explain why. Maybe it’s all the people who are already in DC or Columbus or Portland or New York who know what the local time is and have no idea that I’ve just touched down in their city, or my city, or my former city or my family’s city.
My nine days in Columbus were… Good, I suppose. In that vague way that one can assess the sense of non-time the holidays spent with family can create.
I was able to go see Kevin’s band the Outerspacists again. Steve, the frontman, is this amazing performing, just fucking crazy and screaming all the time– but not like cashing in on some sort of eccentricity bit– like yelling about how much LSU sucks and how the Buckeyes are going to kick major ass, which, funny for a crowd of Columbus’s skinniest, most stylish hipster kids, seemed to be a big hit. Jokingly, after the show I asked Kevin if Steve had a manifesto, and he was like “Oh, yeah, totally, it’s on our My Space page.”
Steve lives right by the bar so while the out of town acts play, we go over and listen to records. He gives us two choices. Steve Miller Band or The Carpenters. Steve Miller Band or Jimi Hendrix. We listen to “Space Cowboy.” Kevin tells me things about him bandmate. Steve has the most extensive VHS collection in Central Ohio. Steve goes to famous OSU football coach Woody Hayes’s grave and talks extensively with him. The problem with Steve is that his middle aged girlfriend and her kids don’t approve of the band. Everyone smokes up. People come and go. Steve wants pizza and to get paid for the show, so we leave.
Kevin also tells me about Danielle. She’s gone to the Peruvian Amazon to do some Shaman apprentice program and to take this hallucinagen that she has to fast for weeks and get spiritually clean to take. She’s not supposed to have outside contact with anyone, but Kevin says she can sometime sneak away to the closest town and call him. She says things like “If you don’t hear from me in three months, it means I’m doing amazing.” Kevin tells me about waiting in the parking lot of a hotel while Danielle was trying to make some extra cash to pay for the plane ticket. He tells me about how they went to this park to do acid and she was wading in a stream and broke her toe. When Steve interjects and says things vaguely related to how Danielle is fucking with Kevin, he just says “She always has to do her own thing, always.” And though he doesn’t exactly say it, I remember last Christmas when I was hanging out with him and Danielle, she said something about being into a new guy she was seeing, and I realize that it’s Kevin. That they’re both too bizarre to just come out and say their together. Kevin isn’t even jealous of the trees that she calls lovers. It’s sweet.
Later, at my mom’s Christmas party, I was talking to my friend Erik Kang. His band Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s just signed to Epic this month, and he was telling me that he and a few local Columbus musicians were having online debates over the classic indie versus major label conundrum. He said people thought he was a sell out; he thought there were pluses and minuses to both sides. We started talking about Columbus music and I said something about Kevin’s band. Then Erik mentioned that band Psychedelic Horse Shit, and he was just like, all Columbus music sounds like that, just a bunch of pretentious stoner dudes. Then he shows me pictures on his I-Phone of the photo shoot he and the band just did for Spin Magazine.
I think it would be really easy to make these two experiences with my Columbus musician friends into this polarizing black and white thing. Like The Outerspacists are so DIY, and therefore somehow more real. But the reality of the situation is that Erik Kang is incredibly happy. He’s been dreaming of making his living as a musician forever, and now he’s finally able to. And who wouldn’t be, to borrow a phrase from my stoner friends, totally stoked on that?
I know Erik through his girlfriend Lauren Yohey, who is a good friend from high school, and whose family is like my own. Erik was telling me about two sold out shows in Chicago they’re playing on New Year’s Eve, and I ask Lauren if she’s going. When she says no, I ask why.Erik says, “Because she hates my band.”
“You do?” I ask. “Why?”
Lauren smiles. “You know. Because they suck!” And they do. Kind of.
Now my top albums of 2007.
MIA “Kala,” Animal Collective “Strawberry Jam,” The Mekons “Natural,” Jay-Z “American Gangster”, Yeasayer “All Hour Cymbals,” LCD Soundsystem “Sound of Silver”, Panda Bear “Person Pitch,” Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”, Devendra Banhart “Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon,” Deerhunter “Cryptograms,” Battles “Mirrored.”
I still don’t get why everyone is freaking out over the new National record. I’m trying though.
Lauren Yohey’s mom Lucy said to me, “You’re so good to your musicians friends.” Yeah, Lucy Yohey, but they’re so rarely good to me.
Eric, Diego and I went to see Ryan Trecartin speak at the New Museum Friday. I’d seen bits of “A Family Finds Entertainment” at the Whitney Biennale last year, and I’d heard a ton about him because, you know, he went to RISD and graduated in the same film class as Eric and a bunch of his friends.
His work has been something that I’ve been unable to wrap my head around. “A Family Finds Entertainment” was actually his thesis project, and gathering what I could from the bits of it I saw at the Biennale, I considered it as something akin to psychedelic horseshit, a documentation of the RISD party lifestyle that can generally be so alienating to be around.
But watching the remaining 4 of 5 segments on Youtube (part 3 was removed when Google bought Youtube and buckled down on showing nudity– in this case an erect penis) revealed some really amazing moments of insight on digital communication.
At the New Museum, Trecartin was an unassuming, somewhat scattered guy, who revealed depths that he seemed to be unable to communicate with words. Every question asked of him elicited a scattered, multi-layered story, an avalanche of explanation that generally seemed to confuse more than illuminate. But this presentation of himself seems to prove a point that his new film “I-Be Area” explores in more detail. The fluidity and layering of identity in a digital age, the construction of history as a stream of shallow consciousnesses and the difficulty in constructing a lasting narrative when information is ever changing and the very definition of knowledge and collective experience is shifting.
I’ve seen only the clips of “I-Be Area” that Trecartin chose to show at the artist’s talk, but what I did see was far more engaging than those fleeting moments of insight in “A Family Finds Entertainment.” In a particularly amazing segment, we see the transformation of I-Be 2, a clone, into the personality of “Oliver,” which is bought over the internet. Once I-Be becomes Oliver, it decides to change its name to Amerisha, so we see the evolution of three different characters. What’s amazing about this segment most specifically is the use of rapid-fire dialogue. The voices of the characters in the scene are at once teenage girlish and strangely menacing. The dialogue is so fast and loud, so devoid of emotional meaning that the voices are almost relativized to the position of sound effects. The characters have conversations that seem to revolve around teen girl topics before you realize they’re talking about slipping into different identities and using the word “bisexual” as if it was quaintly from a prehistoric area. There’s something so foreign yet dead on about it.
Trecartin’s performances in all of the pieces are oddly captivating.
He stated up front that his works are predominately about digital communication– instant messaging, Myspace profiles, even Youtube itself, which is the main mode of distribution for his films. But the thing is, when asked if he felt that there was something wrong with his characters, with this manipulatable, mutable version of identity he stood in defense of his characters. He said he liked them, that he thought there was nothing wrong with the way they lived. Which is something that doesn’t seem quite right. What about the spinning, spinning, spinning of his films? How out of control they feel? How the characters seem creepy because they never quite interact with one another? I’m not sure if this is something he’s figured out exactly yet.
“I-Be Area” isn’t available on Youtube, but this short film “Tommy Chat Just E-mailed Me” is kind of like the prequel.
I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. School has taken a strangle hold on my life for the very last time this month. And it’s been quite a death knell. But here’s a list of all the things I can recall about these past few weeks.
Mystery Family: Cutting wax.
That’s right. The band headed out to record with Mark’s friend Mike in his basement studio in Bethlehem, PA. And we totally made it through without killing each other. The key to this, I believe was the fact that there were 9 cats and one dog living at Mike’s house. Whenever we were getting on each other’s nerves there was an adorable animal to sit on our laps and calm us down. Mark and I went through the house upon our arrival giving each one a unique Mystery Family name such as Albert, Truman and Calypso.
That and everyone got what they call “ripping high.”
But anyway, the actual recording process went surprisingly well. We’d been having pretty in-depth practices with the metronome before we went out there, so we were pretty tight. “Ducks in Flight” we just did without the metronome, and I think it sounds really sloppy, which sucks but everything else sounded pretty good. We’ll get the first “drafts” of the mixes this weekend. Exciting!
I am the City #1: Got a bad review.
So, I got a random email from some guy rambling about how he wrote a review of my zine and he hoped that I hadn’t read it because some things could potentially get misconstrued. He said that in reality he really liked it and he hoped that he could pick it up for his distro. Though he didn’t include a link to the review or even mention the name of his distro, I was able to Google him and find the review. Now, I know bad reviews happen, and I’m definitely happy to get any kind of review. This one basically said that my zine was “partisan” (because zines should be so non-partisan) and “half-baked,” and then kind of critiqued me for being a girl in her 20s living in NYC. Now, I’ll agree with him, the first issue of my zine was kind of half-baked. I think though the irritating thing about it is, how could you say that things might get misconstrued? Don’t fucking take shit back. Just say it.
Anyway, I just checked it out again and he updated with some sort of disclaimer, which I feel like is even more vaguely insulting. Check it out for yourself.
And I think he means “snarky for the sake of being clever.” Huh?
Also, in an announcement that he picked up Brainscan for the distro, he called Alex Wrekk the “Angelica Houston of zines,” which is both factually debatable and metaphorically confusing. Snarky? Clever? You decide.
Wednesday Night: Gonna Walk Around and Drink
This is it. I’m 85% sure that I’m going to be done with college. Wednesday night we had our final marathon class in Screenwriting, which I think has been my favorite class in my entire college career. Despite the fact that I was the only girl, I was treated with an inordinate amount of respect from both my professor and classmates, but I don’t know, everyone was also super casual and fun. I have this feeling like that class has changed the direction of my life in certain ways. I’m leaving it with a feature-length screenplay that I’ve gotten a really great response to, and the courage to kind of pursue getting it made. And even if it doesn’t get made, I wrote a feature-length screenplay! That’s fucking fantastic.
Oh there’s been lots of other stuff too. Stuff that happened at the beginning of the month that I barely remember. There’s been a lot of holiday parties and seeing movies and it’s snowing already and I had this drink called Nog-a-sake (like eggnog and sake) and I’m going to Ohio and then Elaine and Evan are coming. And I’m writing papers on Christian theology and I’ve decided to do a monthly Podcast. And Jesse’s helping me design a website and I’ve been too loud and drunk lately.
Yumi once told me that I fit almost perfectly into the definition of a term she coined, the “lesbro.” The meaning is present in the roots of the word: a lesbro is a lesbian who acts like a bro. Now, while I am not a lesbian and my so-called “bro-havior” is relative to whose company I am in, I can see where Yumi’s loose perception of who I am comes from, especially considering the fact that Yumi and I play music together and that’s the context she most frequently sees me in. I am most definitely a musical “lesbro.”
Here’s the thing. I love the Hold Steady. Over the past year and a half my passion for them has grown steadily, much like their increasing notoriety has their shows being simulcast by NPR now. But my passion for the Hold Steady is not one that I typically care to divulge as often as cooler, more obscure or socially conscious bands, because I feel like it’s something that I perpetually have to explain. I’ve been getting the dreaded question pretty frequently recently, for some reason. Why do I love the Hold Steady? It’s not as simple as the fact that they kind of sound like Bruce Springsteen.
I am a lesbro for the Hold Steady. Not that their music is all that misogynist, considering that big long list of all that is misogynist in rock music. Far from it. When I saw them in Prospect Park this summer there were undoubtedly just as many, if not more, women rocking out to their energetic live show as men. But the thing I appreciate most about them is that the voice they use to tell stories is masculine, but kind of a fresh take on masculinity– the high points and the pratfalls of masculinity in the context of living a specific rock’n'roll party lifestyle. And when you hear the songs, you live it too.
I totally want to live the lifestyle. But generally, I don’t think rock dudes write blogs or neurotically overanalyze and interpret music in any way past, “Can you pump your fist in the air? Yes! Okay, it’s good.”
Except the Hold Steady, who can reference having to kick it in the Chillout Tent and then namecheck poet John Berryman on the same album. Yes!
Also, when I’m listening to the Hold Steady something happens deep, deep inside my Midwestern soul. It’s not that the subject matter lead singer Craig Finn writes about is expressly Midwestern, but the way he tells a story seems to come from down in his Minneapolis roots. They bring you into to this tiny world where you know everyone. You are introduced to a handful of characters (Halleluiah– goes by Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon) and locations (down by the Mississippi River, Penetration Park, the Chillout Tent) and then the entirety of the album plays out their stories in these places. You have to listen to the albums all the way through to discover how thoroughly these themes are explored. The stories that he tells aren’t necessarily new or particularly all that touching, but they’re silly, kind of real, and as one review I read said, “injecting new life into old clichés.” I feel like I know these people. They exist somewhere between here and California.
Thanksgiving. I like to do it as gluttonously as possible. Originally, I was planning on staying home and having a sushi feast, followed by an entire pie, while watching some greatest hits, such as Gilmore Girls and the BBC Pride and Prejudice (the two have more to do with each other than you might imagine). But, Evan’s down from Buffalo, and though I turned down a bunch of dinner invitations for the indulgence you grant yourself when eating alone, I couldn’t resist heading out to Long Island to see him.
Sometimes I think Evan’s family is more like my family than my real family is. I feel incredibly comfortable with his siblings and parents, and the comfort I get from just one visit out to the Leibu estate relaxes me for weeks. I miss Evan. He was the first of my best friend super group to leave the city, and, as we realized after he left, the centrifugal force keeping us all together. In the afternoon we took a walk up his giant hill and down to the abandoned pool about a quarter mile from his house. The house was once owned by a wayward member of the Roosevelt family and isn’t entirely finished, and probably never will be. It’s sort of like Grey Gardens up there (even beyond the wayward presidential relatives connection) with these spooky ruined rooms filled with nothing but dusty, broken Victorian furniture. The pool is the same way. Complete with an abandoned bathhouse and swing set, it’s a deep cement relic of the 1960s long fallen into disrepair. Ivy covers the sides and hangs down into its depths, which are filled with old decaying leaves. It’s absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite places on the East Coast, for sure.
Evan had had a rough semester at med school in Buffalo for a lot personal reasons, but also because he got robbed at gunpoint about a month ago. What do you say to that? He had just parked his car and was a few feet from his house when it happened. He got away safely, and the cops eventually caught the guys, but what the fuck? It’s terrifying when stuff like this happens to your friends, when your forced to think about what would’ve happened if Evan had been shot? Uh, I shudder to think.
Because of all the hard times he’s been having at school he’s realized that the friends he’s made aren’t as good of friends as he thought. This statement resonated with me because it kind of echoed something I had been thinking about. The friends I have now aren’t like the friends I had two years ago, when Elaine was living down the street from me, and Evan spent every weekend sleeping on my couch. They’re not family. But the thing is, it’s not necessarily bad to have friends that don’t think in the exact same way as you, that you don’t bicker incessantly with, that you don’t have a whole network of inside jokes with that serve to alienate the general population. I miss Evan and Elaine terribly, but looking on the positive side, my life has become more diverse because of their absence. And when they come back, it feels good to see them.
The thing is, we’re probably never going to have another group of friends like the one we had. We’re getting older; our attentions are shifting. But we’ll remain in each other’s lives for quite awhile. I never really thought when I was going out dancing with them or having Shabbat dinner at Elaine’s that these people were like the people who would be in my life. But they are. For better or worse.
I’ve been reluctant to write about Yeasayer for awhile. Namely because I’ve been thinking about them a lot, and their success is something happening simultaneously close to me, but without my having any stake in their story. It’s been about three weeks since I went to their CD release party. Three weeks since I listened to the album and went through the motions of hating it so much, then checking my stupid insecurities and bitterest jealousies to realize it’s pretty fucking amazing. Three weeks of the crazy reviews appearing in newspapers and blogs. Various radio programs. Interviews. Tours.
I hate it when my friends are successful. Imagine how it feels when a group of acquaintances I have a vague one-sided competition with is crazy successful.
I think it was this time last year when I first saw Yeasayer. I’ve seen a lot of friends’ bands, and even at this first show at Cake Shop I was fairly impressed with their music. Though they definitely weren’t the same band that they are now, there was something unique and kind of startling about hearing them. The lyrics to the song “Sumertime” then were stolen directly from a Three Degrees song, and after the show, we talked about that. In my subsequent encounters with the members of Yeasayer I was identified as Eric’s girlfriend, the one who knew the Three Degrees song.
The next time I saw them was at Glasslands. They didn’t end up going on until after 2 am, and until then I was on my own, wandering around Glasslands, fuming about how that venue appears to be the draining dump of all the pretension in Williamsburg, and soothing my sorrows in whiskey and Coke. I got so drunk that I loudly berated them their entire set, embarrassing Eric and everyone around me. “Blah blah blah synthesizer shit. Octopad crap. Blah blah blah.” They had changed.
Honestly, their live performance has always seemed fairly contrived. The last time I saw them, Chris Keating knocked over a mic stand in a full-on fit of rock star posturing and called the entire front row ugly. They used to show video projections at their shows that looked like the worst of Stan Brakhage. And really? Video projection? It seems like a pretty straightforward way to say “Hey look! I’m an artist!” But the thing is, under all that artifice is something incredibly substantive.
How can one identify music that is truly great? What makes certain albums stand out like this one does? Like Animal Collective’s “Strawberry Jam” does? I think what it is is something so expressly coming from today. Yeasayer’s music, their lyrics, maybe even their stage posturing and pretension (and I say this reluctantly because I really want that shit to stop. Seriously. I’ve seen a hundred shitty bands perform this way and really, it doesn’t convince anyone but 18 year old Parsons students) is communicating something that is so inherently rooted in the present. And when I think back to other great records– ones that I remember being released– I realize that they do the same. Why does Nirvana’s “In Utero” still sound so good? Because in being so rooted in the time it was made, it transcends the time it was made. By invoking the present, it communicates something beyond that, illustrating the significance of time, the subtle shifts of tastes and art, in a way that’s universal.
So, yeah. The Yeasayer album’s pretty good.
What’s weird being able to witness the band’s success by proxy is that I can see all the trappings of success at work. The gross hangers-on. The promises made to friends against the will of managers and record lables. It’s all happening now. And I have no part of it, but I can’t wait to see what happens.
Why are teenagers in this city so fucking loud? That’s not exactly what I mean, because I know why they’re loud. Regardless of whether one is painfully shy (like me) or obnonoxiously extroverted, or somewhere in between, your thoughts are loud when you’re that age. Being a teenager is claustrophobic– it constricts to silence or forces a loud, guttural release. Can you imagine that feeling accompanying the general claustrophobia of the city?
So I understand why they’re loud. I’ll even grant them temporary insanity on the grounds of being a city kid. But still, their abrasive, ignorant, incessant chatter grates my nerves like very little else can. I find myself asking, why do they have to be so fucking loud?
As I get older my capacity to accept things that I don’t like on the basis of understanding them has weakened. In high school and my early college days, I tried with an emphatic fervor to understand those surrounding me, in ways that I was not understood by my immediate family. Though, even as I’m writing this it rings false. I tried to understand and accept those who were the most worthy of my understanding; not necessarily the smartest or the best, but those who were the most intriguing, those who led the most deliberate lives. I tuned everyone else out. But I was most symphathetic, as everyone is, to those they understand best. In Henry and June, Anais Nin speaks of her relationship with Henry Miller, of her eventual acceptance of his relationships with prostitutes in this way. It’s a behavior in him that she understands. How could she condemn it?
Now, as I’m older, I find myself unable to tune out the disagreeable people who surround me, not just randomly, as on the train, but people I’m forced to have casual relationships with. This shift is most apparent in my sometimes strenuous relations with some of my boyfriend’s friends. And it was in these relations that I first realized that there are people in this world that I just don’t like, and who probably just don’t like me. They’re going to be around, and I don’t need to resent them for that. But, essentially, I don’t understand them as I do the teenagers, my friends, those people I knew in high school.
Recently, I’ve realized that this notion of putting up with people on the basis of understanding their neuroses has led me to accept some behavior incredibly contradictory to my own values set, primarily, in being treated in a hurtful and hateful manner. Essentially, friends put up with each other’s neuroses, understand each other’s shortcomings, soothe frayed nerves and forgive moments of indescretion that arise from tension. A friend in my life has not been doing this for me.
And now for the heavy-handed metaphor. That friend is those high school kids on the train. I hear them shouting at each other. I understand the need their expressing as kids in a huge, anonymous city. But I still resent them for distracting me from my goddamned book.
I went to see Casiotone and Muggabears at Death By Audio last night. I’d never heard of this venue before, and I got the impression that it’s some sort of clandestine show space that will temporarily host amazing shows. People were smoking inside; they were selling plastic cupfuls of Trader Joe’s wine for $3. I’m fascinated by places like this, or places that appear to be like this. Asterik and Glasslands felt that way too. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s the sense of DIY in the otherwise massively corporate NYC music venue business (ahem Bowery Productions) or just the sense of feeling cool and obscure. Anyway, Casiotone was pretty good. I’ve seen him before, and felt vaguely the same about him. Someone ridiculously yelled in between songs, “Give us a smile man! We love you!” much to the dismay of all the other brooding show goers. He didn’t finish until after midnight. We didn’t get to stick around for Muggabears.
Carrie Brownstein now has a blog on NPR Music. Reading it is now somewhat habitual, similar to the length of time I kept Sleater-Kinney on my IPod after I turned 20. They meant a lot to me; they’re part of who I am. Carrie Brownstein’s blog probably hasn’t just hit its stride yet, and maybe it’ll turn out to be super-fantastic– just as soon as she stops speculating about what kind of music people who carry their pets around on their shoulders listen to. (PS. I have higher expectations for Carrie Brownstein’s blog than my own, clearly.) She’s also doing sketch comedy with Fred Armisen, if you can believe that. Her awkwardness is oddly charming. Carrie and I have quite a history. It’s funny to see her become an internet media mogul.
When I went to YoYo a GoGo 1999 in Olympia I gave her a bundle of lavendar and got my picture taken with her. I still have the picture, in various sizes.
In the courtyard of my apartment building there is such an interesting potpourri of sounds right now. Someone is listening to an opera. The trumpet player in the next building is practicing to a metronome, and then there’s this weird low droning of a video game soundtrack. It sounds like a Books song.
Eric and I have been making some real progress with our songs and the looping pedal. These are also some of the first songs in a long time that I’ve written and totally loved. Meanwhile, things are shakey with my other band. It seems as though high drama is brewing.
The basis of mine, Lena’s and Diego’s friendship was essentially that we were all so mopey and maladjusted, normal people didn’t want to be around us. This was the most clear my sophomore year of college 2003, when we wouldn’t leave the apartment, we would listen to sad music, and talk about killing ourselves (jokingly– ha ha) all the time.
So, Halloween rolls around and we thought, hey, goth kids have fun on Halloween, right? Let’s give this a shot. It just so happened that My Favorite was playing a Halloween show at Warsaw, which I thought could be the best possible way to spend Halloween. We decided to all dress up as stars from the Factory– Diego was Andy Warhol, Lena was Edie Sedgwick, and I was Nico. We looked pretty great. Long story short, I read the time of the show wrong, we got to Warsaw as My Favorite was playing their last song, then wandered around the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan for hours until we finally ended up going to some diner where we watched Diego eat soup.
This incident convinced me for quite awhile that “trying to have fun” was mostly just not worth it.
Halloween has been jinxed ever since. But this year, as part of my new “emotional sanity” plan, I decided to dress up like a shark and kick it with some friends. It wasn’t a bad time, certainly. Go Tya, break the cycle. Maybe this whole thing is going to work out. Maybe I’m going to leave wallowing in self-pity back in 2003 along with jinxed Halloweens and my obsession with dark synthpop. We’ll see. Synthesizers still sound pretty good.
Just when I feel like I cannot withstand any more assaults against my frail emotional sanity, New York presents me with a whole new set of challenges.
On Soundcheck today, I worked on a segment/live performance of the band Old Springs Pike. I’d been doing research about them all week, did a pre-interview, all that jazz. I’ve even watched hours of YouTube clips of their live performances, that they would possibly describe as “off-the-cuff” and, god-forbid, “wacky.” This is a band featuring a Tony Award winning member for crissakes. Yet, I feel like nothing could’ve prepared me for the palpability of their actual presence in the studio, the energy and attention they commanded not only while playing, but also while sitting, while hanging out with each other, meeting the host, asking me for tea. Everything was a joke, an opportunity to forcibly apply their wholesome personalities on my own somewhat guarded one. What I liked about Soundcheck was being lost amongst the quiet purveyors of culture, the appreciators of silence and the occasional (and I mean occasional) well-placed quip.
So, I’ve been obsessed with Ann Powers lately, particularly her article in the LA Times about the death of the album. And I was trying to read some stuff by her on the train, when, I had the privilege of witnessing Extroverted Yuppie Reunion 2007. But these weren’t just any extroverted yuppies, these were the worst kind: the cold, ironic, intellectual, detached extroverted yuppies. The kind who are skilled at the art of disguising the self-aggrandizing as the self-deprecating. I sat there for about 20 minutes (sadly about a third of my journey home) listening to them prattle on about studying abroad, AIDS orphans and the future of the electronic book. I’ll admit, I was enjoying the righteous feeling I got as a removed observer. The guy, who was standing and talking to the girl sitting beside me, kept putting his hand on her shoulder in this really condescending way. He would say her name at the beginning of every sentence. She would cringe a lot, but then try to outdo him. I got the feeling that they had a deep, deep disdain for one another. But then all when to shit and they broke the fourth wall. The guy turns to me and in his gooey, condescending high school jock voice says, “I’m sorry, did you stop reading your books because we were talking right beside you?”
I could barely manage a Pffle in return. What am I supposed to say? Am I beholden to be fodder for you and your friends at the next meeting of the Painfully Aware & Socially Tedious Club meeting? Did I ask to be brought into your little post-college world. No. But like all of those sorts of extroverts, he considered me a mere character on his stage of life. A bit player in the Most Selfish Story Ever Told.
I can’t help but think that that was my initial response to the band today on Soundcheck. I’m not going to lie; I find extroverts, for the most part, terrifying. I always seem to get lost in the shuffle when I’m around them. They often don’t seem to have the time for me. They expose my shortcomings as someone who is fairly closed off, who has to be prodded or engaged to contribute. And I envy them their ease. But don’t get me wrong, the world needs extroverts. Otherwise we’d all be awkwardly bumbling around shaking each other’s hand over and over again, making small talk and then going to hang out with the people that we already know. There definitely wouldn’t be any theatre, or sketch comedy, or maybe even movies.
The thing about the band though, their redeeming quality, was just that they were so goddamned excited about everything. Like really, genuinely excited. They silently cheered when they said my name during the credits. They ran through the studio hallway in excitement. They made fun of themselves with a charming ease. They definitely weren’t of the same breed as those people accosting me on the train.
After the show, talking to Eric, I admitted that the music wasn’t necessarily my thing, but it was okay– a huge leap from the salty summation of their EP I had previously given him, something like “musical theatre BS.” His response: “Whoa, listen to you. You’re growing.”
Some people say that they hate it when the person closest to them makes some sort of pointed observation about their character that they in all their obsessive self-reflective glory overlooked. But I totally love it.
And yes, Eric was right. Damn those kids. Damn those attractive young people of Old Springs Pike with their winning smiles and witty repartee. Because despite my silent introverted ways, during their interview I found myself smiling. Reluctantly.
