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eyeshot

Eyeshot.net is running one of my photographs today. Check it out.

"can i count it off?"

We arrived at the Apollo Theater for the James Brown memorial just after 5:30 pm, and by the time we got to the end of the line, the police were already barricading it off and refusing to let anyone else join it. Aside from being disappointing, this seemed puzzling - the line was only three blocks long - until we walked around to the front of the theater and realized that there was an identical line running the other way around the block. With the theater closing from 6-6:30pm for a private ceremony, it was unlikely that everyone in the lines would make it into the theater as it was.

125th St. in front of the theater was still blocked off from the procession earlier in the day, which I was sorry I'd missed. We walked around so I could take photos and we could soak up the scene and stand there for a little while in tribute. There were food vendors and enterprenurial folks selling 5x7 photos in a cardboard frame, and, to our slight amazement, bootleg t-shirt vendors. The boyfriend briefly considered purchasing one.
"Just how much of a white boy in Harlem do you want to be?" I asked from behind the camera.
"Fair point."
The gentleman behind us smiled.

It was, overwhelmingly, an African-American crowd, and a scene that we could absolutely appreciate but perhaps not completely understand. We weren't the only white faces there, but there didn't seem to be enough of us for my liking. Maybe the cold, maybe the crowd, maybe the holiday week, but it saddened me. (Of course, this was before I came home and started reading the local and local music blogs, where it's patently clear that the man's significance and importance are completely -- not even lost, more like nonexistent. That made me sadder.)

So we stood there a few minutes more, watching the women singing "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" for themselves as much as the tv cameras, and the other part of the crowd doing the audience call-and-response to "Night Train" spilling out of a clothing store's PA system, said our farewells and walked back to the A train.

R.I.P.

"In light of the untimely passing of music legend James Brown, the Palace Theater will be issuing full refunds on all ticket sales for Wednesday night's performance. Customers who purchased tickets online will be contacted by Tickets.com via email and receive a full refund within the next 48 hours. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Brown family during this difficult time."

early morning laundromat

yet more reasons to [heart] dulli

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Greg Dulli, from Harp Magazine.

"I have met the entire starting eight of the 1975-76 World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds. Pete Rose is a freak. The rest of them are sweethearts."

This new criteria of evaluating men based on their baseball habits would have been useful in my past.

"ahmet ertegun, thank you kindly"

Can you name one other music industry executive that became the name of a bootleg? No, you can't.

Regrettably, I do not have any Ahmet Ertegun stories. I have stories about ALMOST being somewhere where I could have met him, and have some stories about attempting to explain to people about to meet him who he was, so they didn't completely embarass themselves and the company they worked for, but that's about it.

However, these pieces (from Dave Marsh and Fred Wilhelms) are worth reading. (No quarter given on Atlantic's inability to pay royalties to the musicians who made that label what it was, either.)

"the embodiment of love’s dark sisters"

SUNDAY NIGHT.
[more here]

What does it say about me that I was more excited when I heard about this going on sale than I have been for almost any other musical event in a very, very long time?

I once owned three copies of Berlin and then someone gave me a fourth (original pressing, with the booklet). I kept the fourth and got rid of the rest, and I do not believe I own it on cd. I had to stop myself -- no, more like *forbid* myself -- from listening to it after a while.

It would change you. It would darken you. It would produce tiny little knife-edges everywhere. You would burn yourself, cut yourself, trip over invisible objects. It was a poltergeist. Never, ever, listen to it as a couple.

The boyfriend is not going. It would be edifying, for sure, but not exactly enjoyable. He is curious, but this is definitely the borderland between our musical worlds. I am fine with this particular division, and am actually the tiniest bit relieved on some level that there is no meaning in this record for him.

Sunday night will be like visiting a country that one used to live in. Not a city or state or coast, but the difference of oceans and real borders. Don't worry, my passport is valid.

fire in the western world

Dead Moon have broken up.

Dead Moon were my sounding board, my barometer, the band I went to to resynch when I got tired of bad attitude or tired of artistic phases or tired of anything that was outside of rock and roll, loud and onstage. They were the first local band I saw play live in Seattle, based on a post to some indier-than-thou music mailing list I used to be on back in 1995 (and whose name I no longer remember), where someone with taste waxed rhapsodic about this decidedly mono, non-bullshit band, and I loved the name and I loved that they were too old to rock and did it anyway.

I took friends to see them at Bumbershoot in 1995. I remember the gig primarily as the one the parents brought their 7 year olds who wanted to mosh to. And when i say 'mosh' I don't mean that bullshit crowdsurfing crap that the grunge bands stereotyped, I mean old-school Black-Flag-at-the-CB's-hardcore-matinee moshing, kids in a circle, heads down, arms flying, when someone fell down you picked them up.

That was a Dead Moon show. Always.

I saw them when they played big shows and small shows and all-ages shows, when there were five people there or five hundred people there. It didn't matter. The gigs were always about that dynamic between Fred and Toody and Andrew, each points on a triangle, set up on the edge of the stage, candle on top of the upside-down Jack Daniel's bottle, always burning. That candle never went out during a gig.

My favorite Dead Moon gig was in Olympia a few years ago. H. And I went down there to get the fuck out of Seattle for a night, to get away from rock shows filled with people who were there to be seen or there to see someone, and we wanted a room full of people we didn't know. The bar was out of a timewarp (as is, well, most of Oly) and the band set up on the floor and played, while the audience huddled around. There was no magic circle at the front of the stage that people avoided because they didn't want to be too close. You were IN the show. It felt like an off-the-network house show. It was vital and visceral and the lack of division between audience and band wasn't bullshit, to me it epitomized what Dead Moon were about. There was nothing to hide behind, not even the artificial elevation of a three-foot-high-stage. Toody was fierce and beautiful and I ached because I will never ever be that cool.

[Afterwards, we went to King Solomon's Reef and I remember this because everything we ordered, they didn't have - until the waitress finally felt it relevant to mention that the grill was broken.]

Dead Moon played Europe more than they played the East Coast (and I understand why, now that I know musicians like them, who don't fit into the format or the formula). They played Maxwell's two years ago when I had a conflict with the Vote for Change tour, so I missed them, and they hadn't been back here since. I had vowed to take the boyfriend, I had vowed to take some musician-friends who would have been energized and humbled by them, and, like usual, I wanted Dead Moon to reset my compass and remind me why I am here and why this matters and how the simple act of owning your art can be one of the most powerful things in the world.

And now they are gone, and the hole is bigger than most people will ever realize.

the packrat's dream

The next time someone asks me why I'd like to spend four hours in a record store, or why I can't resist going through the vinyl at the Goodwill, I'll point them to this:eBay: VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO 1966 Acetate LP ANDY WARHOL (item 300054910309 end time Dec-08-06 20:27:23 PST)

bruce-bielanko bear hug

Marah at Light Of Day, 12/2/06


Originally uploaded by The Girl Who.

saying goodbye to the casino

asbury park, nj