jukeboxgraduate.com

five guys walk into a bar

OH MY GOD, FINALLY, FINALLY, SOMEONE FINALLY BOUGHT THIS OFF OF MY CHANUKAH LIST:

I know the Faces are supposed to be a guy's band, the lad's lads, and, furthermore, thoroughly British enough to even confound the most ardent of Anglophiles.

But sweet holy jesus does any of that really fucking MATTER when you have the intro to "Stay With Me," LIVE, dear lord almighty, LIVE, cranked through headphones somewhere very very far past 11? WIth all the raunchy popcorn crunch that is the entire reason you love the Faces? Ronnie Wood's notes tumbling like dustbins down the stairs, aural somersaults, the notes guaranteed to have me stop whatever I was doing and run into the middle of the room wanting to play guitar or dance around or just stand there and FEEL it for as long as it lasted?

OH MY GOD. I cannot stop listening to this. The drum breaks at the end were entirely the reason I was so fucking excited when Kenney Jones joined the Who, even though of course he never got to show any kind of mettle even remotely similar to this when he was with them. (And, of course, we aren't even going to discuss Rod Stewart's solo career because that would rate a fucking book about the size of a James Michener novel, and, ya know -- horse.dead.beaten anyway.)

This is the sound that made me love the Black Crowes even though I always felt slightly -- wrong -- doing so. I know it was faux Faces but for just a second or two of live crunchy guitar debris in my ears I would have done just about anything.

It feels utterly and completely pointless to write anything about the Faces when Nick Hornby covered it just about as well as it could ever be covered when he did those readings with Marah last year. It wasn't some kind of grand treatise on the band or some monumental definition, but it was honest and true and made my heart ache just a little because I couldn't relate to the band the same way because, Anglophile at age 10 or not, I wasn't born and raised in Britain in the 60's or 70's.

But when I discovered them at the age of 10 or 11 when I started opening the Pandora's Box that was all connected to the Beatles/Who/Stones trinity, I loved them. I loved them because they could be big and bold and brash and achingly heartfelt at the same time, bluesy and raunchy, Rod Stewart's voice soaked in whiskey and coated in gravel, Ian McLagen making me think that all rock and roll piano players would be like that, Ronnie Wood being, well, Ronnie Wood, and Ronnie Lane's elegantly solid thundering bassline under it all. I didn't understand it but unlike everything else I was discovering at the time, I didn't need to. I just needed to feel it.

So tonight, at about 1:30 a.m., I threw the headphones on and the cd in the tray for just a second, for what should have been one playing of a live version of "Stay With Me," and suddenly it was like a time machine taking me back.

And I've only listened to one song off the damn thing so far.

(Personal to the people in 3R. I'm *really* sorry. I thought I'd switched the speakers off.)

what would d.boon do?

what would d. boon do?

Merry Krimble.

dear readers: your input solicited

I am looking at pulling together some of my best pieces to submit for an anthology, and would invite your comments as to which of my writing on this site (or anywhere else, for that matter) from the year 2005 you enjoyed the most, or didn't enjoy but think was a damn good piece of writing.

Email or comments, as you like. And THANK YOU.

(P.S. I just upgraded to a new version of Moveable Type so comments may not work perfectly - email if they don't work for you, also so I know...)

11222: my moblog

I'm announcing the debut of 11222. 11222 is my zip code, and the idea is for it to be a quasi-moblog/place for images and *quick* thoughts on the city, the borough and the neighborhood.

saved by the bell: cb's wins another year

CBGB's Reaches Deal To Stay On The Bowery For Another Year

old guitar strings

I am probably not the only music geek who has old guitar strings lying around the house, most of which have significance or at least sentimentality of some sort attached to them.

In trying to find something to do with some guitar strings in my possession, I came across this very cool site, called STRINGSandaDARE. It's a local Minneapolis artist who makes gorgeous jewelry out of guitar strings, and yes, can do a custom order with your own guitar strings.

If you go to the web site, the backstory is cool (and music related, hence the justification for me posting it here), and the attitude likewise. And yes, I am having her make me a bracelet from some Patti Smith guitar strings I got at a show in Seattle a few years ago.

"the ritual of horses"

Patti Smith
Horses
Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 November/1 December 2005

That's what she called it on Wednesday, thanking us for sharing it with her and the band. "The ritual of Horses." And it was ritual, it was celebration of the highest order, she was the shaman, invoking energy, casting it out to us, and receiving it, the audience sent it back.

I think a lot about the role of ritual in rock and roll, what others find tired or clichéd I often take power and comfort from. But I don't remember the original ritual for these songs; I remember being so overwhelmed, emotionally and physically, that I couldn't speak. Even if I could have spoken, the 15-year-old girl did not have the vision or the vocabulary to articulate what she was feeling in any adequate measure. It felt big and deep and enormous and joyful and frightening, rollercoastering from one extreme to the next or usually several at the same time.

The most important part of the ritual over the last two nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was simply the performance of Those Songs, in order, as true and powerful as they could possibly be. It is easy for an artist to infuse new material with spirit and energy; the challenge is to do so with the songs you have played hundreds of times. Of course, this was different; it was tribute and celebration, of the music and the people who made it and were around it, the ones who are still here and the ones who are no longer on the planet.

Now, I know Horses. I know it by heart and sometimes by rote and it is a record I never stopped listening to. I know Horses the way some people know the Beatles, it is that much of a given in my life, it is part of the fabric of my existence. Yes, it is THAT BIG. So given all of this, the fact that I know it so well, I expected to attend one of these shows in honor and enjoyment, and that that would be more than enough.

Wrong.

From the opening notes of "Gloria"--knowing what was coming and hearing it in my head was a joyful thing, not a sad or tired thing, if that makes sense: I know this. It is mine. Ritual.--about 15 seconds in, as she reached

my sins my own
they belong to me, me

And Jay Dee crashes the cymbals with her declarations of "me, me"... the hair on my arms stood up and I realized that something was about to happen to me, and all I could do was hang on and enjoy the ride.

Again, I know these songs. I know them. They know me. I could draw a timeline of my life and show you where they fit in, where I first heard them, when I first understood them, when they took special meaning, when they hurt so much to hear I had to push them away for a little while. They are old friends and compatriots and lovers. Their familiarity feels like my old engineer boots on my feet, so worn in and shaped to my feet that I can forget I have them on, they are part of me, the creases and the scuffs and the wear and the scratch on the left outside heel that I got riding on the back of a motorcycle. My point is: something this familiar and this close to you should not, by rights, affect you so strongly, so deeply, so fucking HARD. But they did. They sucker punched me right in the gut.

The first night I sat in the back of the orchestra, and felt confined and couldn't dance and it wasn't nearly loud enough. Night two (and I wasn't going, I found a ticket from one of the faithful during the intermission on night one) I am perched up in the front row of the mezzanine and it was perfect and beautiful and also so reminiscent of the first time I saw her, similarly ensconced in the mezzanine of the Palladium. There was more than a little déjà vu as a result.

"Gloria" is triumph; it couldn't be anything but. "Redondo Beach" sung preening and proud, Flea (Flea! What a perfect choice for a bass player, given that Tony Shanahan had to be on keyboards the entire time) working the reggae beat back and forth with Lenny, who is clearly digging it. Audible intake of breath as "Birdland" begins and it is motherfucking otherworldly night one, night two her reading has the entire audience on its feet as the song closes. "Free Money" ends: "Side two!" Patti Lee announces with a smile.

Side two. "Kimberly," into a reading/poem that was the genesis for -- "Break It Up".

Break it up, I can feel it breaking
I can feel it breaking, I can feel it breaking

I am on my feet at this point, it is physically painful to be sitting down, not because the seats are uncomfortable but because the experience is so visceral, I want to be a participant, not simply a spectator.

Another intake of breath, I know what's next. Sit down. I hold onto the arms of my seat.

The boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea
From the other end of the hallway a rhythm was generating

Lenny begins the rhythm, eagle eye on her, another ritual, Lenny is her navigator and the intuition and sixth sense is a beautiful thing to witness, always has been.

"Land." Especially "Land," which was always something other and astonishingly continues to be something other, over these two nights it becomes a parable of children lost and our planet destroyed. The audience on the edge until the chant begins:

Horses horses horses horses horses horses

Both nights, it delights me that this is when the riot begins. Okay, perhaps not a riot, but this is the Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and we are sitting in nice plush seats and suddenly little girls are rushing the front in groups and bigger girls are brazenly standing in their seats with reckless disregard for anyone sitting behind them, LET THEM STAND UP! "Come on!" Patti exhorts, and then the rest of the house is finally on its feet, permission given.

Do you know how to pony?

Yes, we do. And we always have done, even when we think we have forgotten who and what we are, "Land" can bring you back, "Land" brings everyone to their feet, spilling into the aisles, dancing, arms aloft, pandemonium that wouldn't have been out of place in 1978, careening back into the song, closing with "Gloria," as always, singing it to her and with her.

And it was here, both nights, that I finally shed tears. Night one it felt like shattering through glass, night two surrender and relief and joy.

"Elegie," always sweet and beautiful, closes it off, finally, and they go off for a break to come back and play a handful of standards, familiars, beautifully executed, with love and energy; it isn't the same as what just transpired but then again, it's not supposed to be.

Listening to a series of songs that together compose an album 25 years later is not supposed to utterly dissolve you again. It should reinforce or exhort or remind, it should not make you homesick when you are already home, it should not still be giving you goosebumps and make your heart roar in its chest.

It should not, but it did.

more 33 1/3

Here's a list of ALL of the artists proposed from all of the 33 1/3 submissions. Those of you who want to guess, perhaps this will help. (Again, don't go for the obvious.)

Out of all of these, eight will be chosen.

the onion continues to rule

RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs