While You Were Art I

What a wonderfully unproductive semester.

Well, that's a bit hyperbolic. Unproductive as in no actual finished products. Last night's filming of Slip Conway completely fell through. Thankfully the cast is still on board with doing it so it'll be rescheduled soon.

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have my first video of 2011 done. It's called Ballet for Audio Tape. It's another exploration of romantic reductionism. I'm going to condense several albums into three brief movements (the emotional essentials of the records) on a cassette tape. My dancer will then try to move to this new sound and I'll take the footage and try editing that to the cassette. It's a very bizarre process and it's hard to describe.

In anticipation of this project (and do act as a prequel), I'm going to upload my Introduction to Romantic Reductionism on my Vimeo site. It's so much fun to have an -ism. He filled his head with notions, seemingly.

Oh man, I'm sitting in the library, looking over the Fenway, and I see the tests of the new HD jumbo-screens at Fenway Park. Unnecessary? Yes. Crystal clear in the rain and half a mile away? Yes. I'm actually in awe of the quality.

Man, the city looks cooler in the rain whilst listening to Miles Davis.

Argument Against Snobbery No. 1

Most people will not give the original mixes of M.O.I's We're Only In It For The Money and the Beatles' Let It Be time of day. The former is overly censored and the latter has a Phil Spector slickness that was originally called "a cardboard coffin for the greatest band in the world."

I just listened to them back to back and I feel like I'm back on Bank Street.

We're Only In it will always be Summer 2006. Turning 16. Starting to gain a little independence. Starting to explore video work. Being in love. Acting in a radio play. The sun warming my face.

Let It Be will always be my Mother's favorite album and that means a lot.

Sinner's Midnight

For the first time since 2007, I'm in a band again. Joseph, Alberto and I. We are Uncle Deadly. I mostly play the keys which has me wicked excited. I haven't played this much keyboards in years and years. So much of it is still there. During our first practice, I was whipping out great licks. Tonight I was a little too tired to play at my best, but did teach the boys an old song of mine called "Similar But Not The Same." We're totally reworking it to give it a little more life and a little less...well, death. I'm surprised they took a liking to it. I know it will be even better once we're done on it.

Two other points. One, I saw Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears at the Middle East on Sunday. I swear to God, I wish I could live there. He played the blues with such a hard edge. Being part of "Booty City," "Sugarfoot," and a cover of "Louie, Louie" live was worth the price of admission and THEN SOME. Got to talk to him after the show too a/k/a shake his hand and say he's a cool guy to a "enthusiastic" reply of "Thanks, man." Whatevs. He's Black Joe and I'm just another tax-paying citizen of Booty City.

I bought three more albums. The Sun Sessions by Elvis Presley, Psalms for Ticklebag by Reality Challenged, Touch Me There by L. Shankar (produced by FZ), and The Man from Utopia by FZ. The last one brings my FZ count to 21 with 27 remaining. They are all good (and bizarre) records and will probably get a proper review at some point in time.

I've been having a strange week. It's not the same feeling of dread. It's like a mental growth spurt I suppose. Maybe I'm preparing myself to return to the Cape. I was originally thinking it was going to be this weekend, but with the crummy weather and a hopeful shoot, I may stay around here. The people grew sad...or corn. Depending on their want.

Back to my song, the two best lines I feel are "I'm sick of being a stranger sleeping in a stranger's bed" and "Love is the only reason I came." Well done, High School Kane. Well done.

If We'd All Been Living in California...

This past week I bought three LPs (technically four, but I'll get into that some other time). First, two Zappa albums. Orchestral Favorites and Uncle Meat on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, Joseph and I landed the last two copies of The Strokes' new album Angles which became yet another mild drug that kept us going through our all-night writing session. We probably listened to the thing three complete times, the did all our favorite cuts, then by luck, watched them perform "Taken for a Fool" on Leterman. I love the fact this 80s-power pop thing is back. Gotta dust off my Cars albums and what not.

We continued to keep the stereo on all night and I put on Orchestral Favorites when the sun was coming up. At that point, my blood had been replaced with shitty Mexican coffee so the album seem to last about eight minutes. Granted, it's not suppose to be one of his best. It was one of the unauthorized albums Warner Brothers put out instead of Zappa's Läther box set. To show the album had no input by the big cheese, not one of the members of the The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Orchestra was credited. But for what it's worth, best version of "Strictly Genteel" around.

Uncle Meat was the one I looked forward to the most. As with nearly all of his older LPs, Zappa did major remastering for both the Old Masters projects and the 1987 release of his back catalog (see Ask for Record at Counter) The 1968 mix shows all the problems with digital compression. When CD mastering technology first came out, one of the main objections was to get rid of the hiss picked up from the original tapes. High pass filters were installed. Add that to compression, lots of high frequency sounds on the recording suffer. As a result, the percussion on the original LPs sounds DYNAMITE. Tunes like "Nine Types of Industrial Pollution," which on the CD sound like fuzzy sonic ramblings, end up having wonderful texture. The drumming on "Cruisin' for Burgers" is so freaking heavy on the LP, it's wonderful. Wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful it really makes it.

Also the album on whole flows a lot better. It's more more cohesive- like a fluid stream of consciousness instead of a rushed group of loosely related tunes. This is probably because the '87 mix has an obnoxious amount of reverb. I can't wait to get my hands on a vinyl copy of Lumpy Gravy now.

ZAPPA LP COUNT- 20*
LEFT TO GO- 31**

*Including Mystery Disc 2
**Up to 1988 and not counting The Old Masters Box Two and Three.

someone to run their fingures through my hair and MEAN IT

You Can't Make This Same Lame Zappa Reference Anymore! Vols. 5-6

Last night I had that dream again. This time it came with a bit of a twist.

My mother's boyfriend drove me home one night. The area looked vaguely like Freeman Street but I was sure I had never been there before. He first stopped at a liquor store and I waited in the car. After waiting a bit, I went inside looking for him.

Inside the store were a handful of kids. Very creepy looking, like Village of the Damned meets The Wicker Man creepy. They were very snide and made these condescending comments to me.

I decided to split and walk home at this rate. A young boy ran in front of me. I followed him but pretended like I wasn't doing so. The further we went, the brighter it got until I was in a field with a bunch of kids, playing some kind of bizarre and unorganized game of Capture The Flag. I still ignored the kids even though I saw other kids my age being the counselors and coaching them along. Nearly everyone my age was guiding some younger kid.

I made my way up the hill to this gypsy caravan. Inside each wagon was basically a summer camp cabin and one of my friends was there. I snuck into one of the wagons and all the kids were watching old variety shows from the 1950s and Frank Sinatra movies, transfixed to the sets. I made my way to the back room where the bunks were.

It was a girl's cabin and Bailey was on a top bunk, wearing typical camp counselor garb. I smiled at her but she looked concerned.

"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just wish I could do this again."

With that, I buried my face into the bed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

***

It may be an understatement to say I have been very emotional lately and these dreams don't help at all. They bring me way down when I'm in the best spirits. These dreams of let-down children. Jesus H Christ on a crutch. That's heavy. In more than one way...

I have a bunch of music posts to do due to the shit ton of albums I've acquired in the past two days. The Strokes, Frank Zappa...well that it. Two Zappas. Also I just found the picture I took for my "I Melt With You" rant so that will come up at some point. Now that my life is sorta back in a normal position, I'll lay that all out. But I'll lay it out easy.

You Can't Do That In Hyannis Anymore! Vol. 3

There was a Newbury Comics in Hyannis in this crummy strip mall. It was right next to the Toys 'R Us so it was only logical for my giddiness over toys to be transferred to albums just next door. The first time I ever cut class was Junior Year in order to get my hands on Bright Eyes's Cassedega (2007). A lot of my first memories of Zappa albums started in that parking lot at night when I'd drive away hearing "Gregory Peccary" or "Uncle Meat" for the first (and certainly not the last) time. I dragged girlfriends there after having to endure clothes shopping. My friends would go and loudly and bluntly express our opinions. One time the whole store SANG when "Bohemian Rhapsody" came on the stereo.

The floor went through many changes but in my heart, the record albums were always in the way back. I was maybe 12 when I first shuffled through the then slim record selection. Most of it was hip-hop. Rock albums were RARITIES hence my first new LP I ever bought was Weezer's Maladroit. No I was never a huge Weezer fan but asking for a Barenaked Ladies LP was (and still is) a futile request. Also Daft Punk's Discovery was wicked out of print on vinyl.

There's still a Newbury Comics in Hyannis. They moved to the mall in the slot were the old Friendly's used to be. It's not that I'm bitter that it's changed. It has but that's not my point. I guess I'm learning that that certain part of my life is over. I have new record joints now. Better even. Digging beyond my wildest dreams. But nothing will come close to the joint I'd frequent after school was over, after the sun went down, and drive home from, listening to something new in the dark.