Caryn Rose's jukeboxgraduate.com

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

• I hear a sax in my head instead of Nils in the intro. (Is it Nils? I don’t know. WOULD LOVE SOME ACTUAL CREDITS, so I knew who was playing what. Big downside to downloading. We’ll have them in the morning.
• I almost wish it was less pop and more of a barn burner with more electric guitar and less strings, but obviously we have no idea what this will sound like live.
• I like the piano, a lot. I like the other textural effects a lot less.
• I get the “angry” part – he’s saying, “this is what’s supposed to happen, and isn’t happening”
• This is going to be an interesting record to hear on tour in Europe.
• The bridge is absolutely killer and redeems any shortfalls I think I hear right now.
• This will be the most misappropriated/misinterpreted song he’s released since BITUSA. (Please leave your flags at home on tour, or at least don’t stand in front of me if you feel the need to wave them during this song.)
• Overall, I like it, am less worried about the record as a whole, and far less worried about the fact that I’d already bought tickets to 7 shows without having heard one note of the album.

More later.

Where’s the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where’s the hearts that run over with mercy
Where’s the love that has not forsaken me
Where’s the work that’ll set my hands, my soul free
Where’s the spirit that’ll rain rain over me
where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
where’s the promise from sea to shining sea

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I traveled to Hartford last weekend to see Patti Smith’s first museum photography exhibit, titled Camera Solo at the Wadsworth Atheneum. It’s a small but dense exhibit, three rooms of photographs and artifacts. It took about an hour and a half to go through everything, which included time to watch a 7-minute 35mm short that was part of the exhibit, and to revisit favorites at the end.

The exhibit is accompanied by an audio tour that you can access from your cellphone, by dialing an 800 number and punching in an exhibit number. Patti herself recorded the narration, which was just fantastic. It definitely added another dimension to my experience of the exhibit, and I appreciated the low-tech but extremely effective method. (You can hear the narration in the museum’s account on Soundcloud!) If you had the narration and the exhibit catalog (which I had received as part of a charity grab bag I purchased during the New Year’s Eve shows, you would be able to experience about 50% of the exhibit.

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Definitely did not see this one coming last night!

I am so divided on this cover of the song. I think she starts off strong and think the initial attitude and perspective work, but then feel like the performance loses its way a little bit–and not just because of the lyric changes, or that she forgets the words at one point. I think it’s that I just want it to work so incredibly badly that I will forgive it a million sins.

More on the show later.

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Even I am not immune to the year-end listing process. Here’s my list of favorite/best shows of 2011. It’s so skewed as to representative of nothing except my particular universe – but it’s not like I’m pretending that 2012 isn’t going to be a laundry list of Springsteen and Afghan Whigs shows.

1. Twilight Singers, San Francisco
2. Wild Flag, Bell House
3. U2, Montreal night 1
4. Big Audio Dynamite, Roseland
5. Horrible Crowes, Bowery Ballroom

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I care a lot about visiting the various sites of rock and roll history, whether it’s the former site of the Cavern Club or the Finsbury Park Astoria or the Palladium or 213 Bowery or the bank that used to be the Fillmore East. But clearly I am close to something very much resembling insanity to wake up at 6 a.m. in Las Vegas, rent a car, and head four hours into the desert to look for a dead tree.

Yes. We went looking for The Joshua Tree.

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Lots of amazing things going on:

• Three Imaginary Girls list B-sides in their Imaginary Gift Guide – Books for Movie and Music Fans
• There’s an interview with me on Another Rainy Saturday
• Great review of the book in The Big Takeover (print only)
• And many more, which you can read about on the book’s website.

I’ll also be appearing at the reading series at Pete’s Candy Store (along with Rosie Schaap) on January 26, 2012.

This week over at Fuck Yeah, Setlists I’ve donated five setlists from my collection: Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, R.E.M., Springsteen and the New York Dolls. If you like setlists, it’s an amazing site. If you’ve got your own setlists, he’s always looking for submissions!

I reminisce about rock and roll tourism, U2 style, in ye olde pre-internet days over at Scatter o’ light.

Tonight, Gorman Bechard’s Color Me Obsessed finally made it to New York City, and #1 Mats Fan Jesse Malin organized a homecoming party worthy of the movie, the band, and the fans. Highlights included Patrick Stickles from Titus absolutely nailing “Sixteen Blue,” Kevn Kinney’s lovely “Here Comes A Regular,” Tommy Ramone (who, you may remember, produced Tim) singing “If Only You Were Lonely,” – the list goes on, and on, and on, but was capped off (in my opinion) by the video above, Craig Finn and Tad Kubler doing “Within Your Reach.”

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Mudhoney at the Croc, 2000

I moved to Seattle in March of 1995. I had to get out of New York City, and it was Seattle over Chicago or San Francisco because I had a friend offering me a free room in her house. I was a jaded New Yorker who knew that living in Seattle didn’t mean I was going to run into Chris Cornell shopping for green beans any more that living in New York meant you ran into Lou Reed when you went out to buy milk. It was post-grunge, post-Nirvana, post-Everett True. It was two years after Mia Zapata was murdered and not even a year after Kurt killed himself. It was before they routed Pine Street through Westlake Park (and that will only mean something if you have lived there long enough to remember the difference), it was still quiet and dark and odd in that very Northwest, very Seattle way.

I explain all of this to give you background why I was so interested in, and thrilled by, Mark Yarm’s oral history of the scene, “Everybody Loves Our Town”.

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