Wcw - Art

I am eating your brains

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:39:13 +0000

'Nuf sed

subliminal messages these fonts are feeding you...
(Lars Willem Veldkampf)

Mrow

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:56:55 +0000

P+C Mark Goetz 2009

Here’s my new wallpaper at work.

Mark Goetz, My new wallpaper
Mark Goetz, A Blog of Technology, Usability and Sensemaking, 17. November 2009

Stephen Colbert's view

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:43:19 +0000

Stephen Colbert's view, Matteo Pericoli 2008

Stephen Colbert’s bleak view made me laugh. And he taps into many a city-dweller’s paranoia: “Because my studio is directly across from a windowless telecommunications skyscraper whose peak bristles with microwave transmitters, when I think of my view mostly I think about cancer, so I try not to think about it at all.”

Paul Goldberger, Slide Show: A Room With a View
The Book Bench, The New Yorker, 4. November, 2009

It's no real pleasure in life

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:33:54 +0000

Ghidorah

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."

Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, 1955

and suppose you were a member of Congress

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:07:41 +0000

Veal.

There are those who believe veal stock is unnecessary. Those people are idiots.

Carol Blymire, Veal Stock
French Laundry at Home, 20. April 2008

Hat tip: Ruhlman, of course.

Rock Snob Trivia

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:32:05 +0000

Zumpano, I guess. When, where, who?
Who knows.

Zumpano may forever be relegated to the late rounds of Rock Snob Trivia, the correct answer to "What band was A.C. Newman in before The New Pornographers?"

Tom Moon, Zumpano's Power-Pop: Predating Pornographers
NPR.org, 13. June 2007

So, I'm at the record shop. Aaron, the KITS-manque clerk, is chatting. [He made it. A quick Google search indicates he still works for that worthy outlet. Good on you, Aaron.] What records, I essay, shall I buy that week. Aaron is not as reliable as Mike Slumberland, briefly employed there, but he is always enthused. Sometimes about bad, bad records (anyone want my Revolver LP?), but often about items you might not otherwise try that turn out pretty good. The Moles, say, another act whose later staying power likely surprised many.

'Well,' he says, looking a little embarrassed. This is an oddity for Aaron, whom it is easy to picture snorting lines off a stripper's ass backstage while declaiming loudly about nothing. I have no idea if he's the type to do that, but I am certain he is the type not to embarrass easily.

'Well, this LP is really good,' he says. 'Except it sounds like Billy Joel. But, you know. Good.'

Now, I really hate Billy Joel. But it isn't as if I have better things to do with my money. So I pick it up. It is Zumpano's 1994 LP, Look What The Rookie Did. It does, in fact, sound like Billy Joel, as well as any number of middle-of-the-road '70s pop hitmasters. It's catchy. Painfully so. I briefly flirt with hating it, and give up. This is the power of truly superlative pop music: it creates its own false consciousness. While it plays, you love it, no matter what. And if it's really good, and you claim you don't love it, you're just faking.

Somewhere in the decade and a half between then and now, I became too lazy to keep up with things, and while I knew I liked the New Pornographers (I mean, anyone who doesn't like Letter From An Occupant has pretty much given up on living), I had no idea they were connected to distractedly beloved, long-forgotten Zumpano.

Which is where the rock-snob epithet rankles. In a universe where most folks were like me, that LP would have gone 10x platinum like Britney, though granted -- capitalism as we know it likely would have collapsed as well. So you take what you can get.

Which is, wraparound shades.

Whew. Punk rock.

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:01:53 +0000

The new Kaki King song is unbelievably good.

John Darnielle (I think), Like Glistening Pearls
Last Plane to Jakarta, 28. January 2008

What he said.

Anton

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 04:42:02 +0000

Posted by Sasha

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:15:32 +0000

Posted by Sasha for It Is Juneuary

Who knew a music critic who loves Led Zeppelin had such a good eye?

Nice work.

1:49 of pure joy

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:11:13 +0000

Times New Viking - ‘Rip It Off’ CD/LP coming January 22

OH MY GOD
THAT FIRST SONG
OH MY
GO
D
G
OD
GOD
GOD
GOD
GOD

I AM FREAKING OUT

this is the best thing
oh my god

it is like
hearing sad sappy s ucker for the first time

FUCXKDKUFKC

'allison', A Mere Mer-De-Terre
Said the Gramophone (comment), 15. September 2007

Hat tip: Said the Gramophone says 2007's Best Music: Songs

#44, Times New Viking, "Devo and Wine" (link for as long as it lasts: download now, cheese)

Listen to all 50. They're not all quite like that, but..

You can thank me later.

Quote of the month

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 08:17:22 +0000

The presumption that readers have the intellectual curiosity of a squirrel monkey and the moral range of an Amish yam farmer has worn thin.

Chuck Thompson, An Excerpt From ‘Smile When You’re Lying’
New York Times, 18. December 2007

Matthias Grünewald

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 18:33:03 +0000

The Crucifixion (detail)
ca. 1515, Oil on wood
Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar

The first thing you see, walking through the chilly gothic chapel towards Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece, painted between 1512 and 1516, is death. It is death without disguise, grotesque and terrifying. The wooden cross to which the dead man is nailed has a three-dimensional, trompe-l'oeil quality. Look at the wood: rough, cheap, ugly timbers have been crudely knocked together, as if the artist had asked a carpenter to make a mock-up. From this three-dimensional cross, the body of the dying man juts forward. His green fingers are twisted in horrible, grasping claws. This Christ is frightening, a dying man clutching at you, reaching desperately for help that never comes.

Christ dies in a terrible, empty desert place, with low massifs in the distance, and a lightless light, a depressing, dreary, empty darkness. His yellowish-grey, rotting flesh is covered with red sores, and the dead Christ's green corpse in the panel below is perforated and running with bodily fluids. It's horrible.

Jonathan Jones, Hidden horror
The Guardian, 12. December 2007

Seeing this in person remains one of the more overwhelming experiences I have had.

Getting a clear view of the surreal background Leonardo put behind Gioconda in the Louvre, discovering Chaime Soutine at the LACMA, and for that matter watching John Darnielle make hipsters sing along to bad pop songs were moments. Walking into Yet Another Church in Yet Another Cute European Town and instead of Yet Another Gothic Altarpiece seeing this..

Whew -- punk rock.

Times change

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 05:51:28 +0000

"Police firing at crowd, Potrero Hill [?]" (5. July 1934)

The neighborhood looked a little different back when.

Though I guess it could be Rincon Hill.

End up like Rimbaud

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:20:54 +0000

Still from the Verlaines 'Death and the Maiden' video, 1983

This is a song a heard on the radio in high school (it came out when I was thirteen in 1983, but KALX went through a big NZ phase in the mid eighties, so it was probably '85ish) but could not identify the offhanded backannounce. I heard it again a couple years later, this time when that storied radio station played the band's entire singles-and-stuff compilation one day at midnight, so I actually knew for what to look at the record shop. They had one copy. I did not have the requisite six bucks. When I did, they had sold their one copy. I pined.

In 1989, the baseball team I dread to love ('my big men,' of course) made it to the World Series. Their opponents were clearly better, but I thought they might eke out two games before being eliminated. Instead there was an earthquake that killed several dozen in a really awful manner, the Giants got swept, and a couple weeks later, The Verlaines, hard-luck losers always, swung through town.

Perhaps thirty people showed at the mildly lamented Berkeley Square. They played mostly new stuff, disdaining that song I'd heard on a cheap car stereo driving late in the suburbs. It was their albatross, I found out later, their "She's Not There," their one big hit in New Zealand. One of their number had failed to get a visa from the ever-friendly US authorities. They hadn't drawn for spit. An earthquake had just knocked down the Bay Bridge. It was drizzling. And yet, dutiful souls, they played "Death and the Maiden," both as a tonic and a curse, as a carnival ride garish with lightbulbs and sticky with handprints. It was a mixed climax to a decent show, unsatisfying, but better than I had deserved to expect.

Gina Arnold wrote one of her hagiography-to-myself reviews. I've never forgiven her.

Which is to say, enjoy. It's quite a song, even when the band is in the worst possible mood.

Wcw, private communication
13. March 2006

Hat tip: John Darnielle

Lee Hazlewood, 1929 - 2007

wcw@bignose.org (Wcw) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:45:41 +0000

Some years back, 1995 maybe, Lee and Nancy toured. They came through town. I was too cool to see a three-decade-old rehash. Nancy did an appearance at Amoeba in Berkeley, walking distance from my place back when. I was too cool to wander by. Lee and Nancy were playing at the Fillmore. The Fillmore? Bill Graham?

I was way, way too cool for that.

My friend John was not. John bought a ticket. It was expensive for the day, twenty, thirty dollars. A lot of cash in the mid-'90s, when $5 bought you a ticket to the next great gig at some little club in town.

Good for him. I was too cool.

The night of the show, maybe the night before, John calls. He has some abysmal influenza. He cannot go. But he can give me his, ticket, on one condition: I take the copy of his favorite Lee Hazlewood LP, wait until after the show, and get the man to sign it.

That made it a free show. I was not too cool for that.

I go, and Nancy comes out. No Lee. She sings some. It is okay. She is aging, but she is a pro. She does some good songs, she does some bad songs. I feel good that I did not pay for this set. Then, with a moderate rustle in the audience, Lee appears. I guess he was in his sixties then, but he seemed older. His voice was deeper than on his old records. I think the opening duet was 'Sand'.

In a word, he kicked ass.

At most he stuck through seven songs. Fifteen years older than my father, he nevertheless continued to kick ass. I wanted him to stay. I wanted him to sit on the edge of the stage for as long as it took for him to scribble a new song, teach it to his session guys, and perform it. Alas, he seemed to tire, and he exited.

Nancy chased the crowd with 'Knights in White Satin'. Her rendition was awful. The crowd's glow dispersed.

I waited with a handful of fanboys as they left. The Fillmore gets more depressing than ever after a show. It is a high-school auditorium, without the charm, with a vague odor of regret.

Eventually, Nancy appeared. I waited for Lee.

Eventually, he wandered from backstage. I must have perked up. Recall, at the time I am 25. Lee is 66. The LP in my hand is an original, so itself 28 years old.

"What are you doing here?" the man observes acidly. "This album is older than you are."

I explained about John, laid up at home.

"I never do this," replies Lee. "I let Nancy do the signing." I probably looked sad.

Still, he signs John's record. "Get better soon, John," or similar.

Grumbling, Lee leaves.

Now and then, I still think of the seven songs Lee cranked out in his sixties.

Recquiescat, Mr. Hazlewood.